The Best Days
by Adi1
Summary: Sasuke returns to Konoha and gets some bad news about a friend. Now, even as he deals with his own problems and attempts to reintegrate himself into Konoha, he must try to help Naruto reach his goals before time runs out. Sasuke-centric. Terminal illness.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1

Sasuke defeated Itachi when he was seventeen. The day had been inappropriately beautiful, he remembered, one of those spring days when the sun is out and shining, everything is in bloom, and the air is still crisp enough to be comfortable. Sasuke and Itachi managed to level all blooming plants within a five-mile radius of where they were fighting. This, Sasuke later reflected, had probably made it extremely easy for Naruto and Sakura to find him afterwards.

Naruto and he fought, of course, because that was what they _did_, but he was exhausted from fighting Itachi and Naruto was strong. Strong enough to give Sasuke as much trouble _as_ Itachi while Sasuke was at his full strength. He couldn't really bring himself to care that much. He felt numb. The type that comes from shock, from reaching the objective you have worked towards for the past nine years, have thrown everything away to accomplish, and realizing that not only are you still alive, but that it has achieved absolutely nothing.

Well, that wasn't entirely true. It _had_ destroyed the one chance he ever had for answers to his questions. _Why? _he thought desperately, as Naruto slipped past his defenses and slammed him into the ground. _Why not me too? Had you been planning it for a long time, or had it been a spur-of-the-moment decision? Why the hell did you never _tell me Itachi didn't answer, couldn't answer, because he was dead, and Sasuke was still here, still alone; and this time, he didn't even have hate to keep him company.

Sakura healed them both after the fight (just because Sasuke was in shock did not mean he couldn't inflict some serious damage. He had, after all, trained under a psychopath while in a drug-induced haze for three years. He was very good at fighting while his mind was elsewhere), and they spent a night in the clearing-turned-barren wasteland to let Sasuke recover a little before Sakura tied his hands behind him, Naruto slung Itachi's decapitated body over his shoulder and packed the head into a bag, and they all set out towards Konoha. Sasuke considered running, but he was too tired, both mentally and physically, and Naruto and Sakura were both, admittedly, powerful ninja and likely well briefed on what he may have learned from Orochimaru. Plus, he was afraid that if he thought too hard about the fact that his goal was complete and his life in tatters, it would break him and leave him in a crumbled heap for Sakura to sling over her shoulder and carry back like the corpse Naruto was holding. That, and no matter how good a medic-nin Sakura was, she couldn't heal the types of injuries he'd picked up from Itachi in one night.

Naruto, of course, was completely healed. Lucky dumbass.

The pace his two former teammates set was a slow one, and the part of Sasuke that made observations and calculations without his conscious effort informed him that it would take about four days to get to Konoha from where the clearing he had already unconsciously begun thinking of as The Battlefield. The main problem with this, as became apparent on the first day of travel, was that cadavers did not take four days to begin to decompose. Naruto, who had taken it upon himself to carry the body of Sasuke's brother all the way to Konoha, complained for about a half-an-hour straight to Sakura about this when they finally stopped for the night. Sakura, showing patience Sasuke was unaware she had, let the dead last do so while she checked Sasuke over and cleaned and rebound injuries. Then, still completely ignoring what was actually coming out of her teammate's mouth, she walked over to Naruto and unceremoniously tugged off his chuunin vest, obviously intent on doing the same. This effectively stopped Naruto from ranting about the smell of a decomposing body when said body was slung over one's shoulder.

"Oi!" he shouted instead, trying to squirm out of the pink-haired kunoichi's grasp. "Sakura, what are you…"

"I don't care if you think you're completely healed," Sakura interrupted. "I want to check anyway."

"You _know_ I'm completely healed. You saw the fight. The bastard over there didn't get _that_ many hits in!"

"Which," Sakura stated, "is precisely the point. So hold _still_." Naruto held still, and silence reigned for a moment, while Sasuke wondered vaguely why Sakura would re-examine someone she herself admitted didn't really need to be examined. Finally, the blond grinned lecherously.

"You know, there was a time when I'd have _killed_ for you to have to… ah… _examine_ me." Sakura swatted him lightly without looking up. "_Ow!_ Hey! Injured ninja here! Aren't you supposed to take a vow not to hurt people or something like that?"

"That's only civilian doctors and you know it," Sakura said absently, concentration firmly on checking Naruto's heart-rate and breathing. "Medic-nins are called into the field just like any other ninja." She frowned, and then prodded Naruto in the center of the chest, making him whine about abuse and unfairness to the unwell. "You shouldn't be carrying a 170-pound corpse." Naruto bristled, apparently completely forgetting that he'd been complaining for half an hour about having to do exactly that.

"I've carried heavier, Sakura-chan, and _you_ know it." The looked thoughtful for a moment, then grinned. "Besides, Uchihas are skinny. I'll bet Itachi wasn't more than 145…_ow!_ Stop hitting me!"

"Stop acting like an idiot, then!" Sakura returned, apparently unconcerned with Naruto's head. She continued their conversation as though Naruto hadn't decided to take a moment to show precisely how much of a moron he was. "I don't understand why you wanted to bring anything but the head anyway. I mean, traveling with a cadaver isn't precisely _pleasant_ at the best of times, but when a party needs to move slowly due to injuries it quickly becomes downright unbearable."

Naruto glanced over at Sasuke who, suddenly realizing that he was openly watching them and listening to their conversation, refocused his eyes on the fire. When Naruto spoke, it was much softer. "I thought… well, he was the last family member he had, you know? I thought maybe there was some sort of super special Uchiha burial ceremony that he'd want to perform or something." Sakura sighed.

"Naruto…"

"Don't you dare start," Naruto snapped. "He's never attacked the village…"

"Just you."

"_I_ attacked _him_! He's never attacked Konoha; he's responsible for the deaths of two of the most powerful Konoha missing-nin…"

"He's a missing-nin himself…"

"_And_ he is returning willingly," Naruto finished stubbornly, as though he hadn't been interrupted. Sakura sighed.

"I'm pretty sure he's only returning willingly because he doesn't feel up to running away," she murmured.

"It doesn't matter _why_," Naruto insisted stubbornly. "It matters _what_, and _what_ is that he came back with us, and he did it under his own power without trying to escape."

_It's the first night,_ Sasuke thought sardonically but didn't say aloud. _Give me some time, dead last_.

"It's still only the first night," Sakura unknowingly echoed Sasuke's thoughts.

"He won't run," Naruto asserted.

"How can you be sure?" Sakura asked reasonably.

"Because he knows if he does that I'll just track him down again," Naruto returned fiercely, and that was that.

o o o

In the end, Naruto and Sakura burned the body. Sakura came up to Sasuke the third day and hesitantly suggested it, and then accurately interpreted Sasuke's silence to mean he didn't care one way or the other. They scattered the ashes through the canopy of the nearby forest, an old Konoha tradition for ninja that fell in battle far from home (though, of course they didn't take the time to change their course after doing so. After all, they _weren't_ behind enemy lines, and leaving traces of themselves behind would do no more than perhaps baffle a few passing animals).

At about noon on the fourth day, Sasuke sensed a new presence around them in the forest. The forest had been slowly getting thicker as they traveled, after a while making it impossible for three fully-grown people to travel on foot and forcing them to the upper branches. Sasuke, who was now much better thanks to three days of Sakura's care and what by shinobi standards was a slow pace, and whose hands were now free for convenience's sake, considered vaguely for about three seconds trying to make a break for it. He eventually decided it wasn't worth the effort, as he could die in Konoha just as well as he could outside of it. This view also led him to remain silent when he felt their new travel companions. He could, after all, die as well outside of Konoha as inside.

It became obvious fairly quickly that the new presences were not going to attack them. Well, they weren't going to attack _Naruto and Sakura_, and probably wouldn't attack him as long as he continued to move toward the village. He caught a sight of an ANBU mask and allowed the perfectionist in him that had earned him the title genius to think _sloppy_. Sound ANBU wouldn't have been sensed, let alone seen.

Even with Konoha ANBU and his newfound apathy, however, he hesitated upon seeing the gate to the village he had abandoned. He'd fully prepared himself years ago to never so much as see this place again, and had spent those years creating in his head an extensive list of why he was better off without it. Now, faced with the fact that he was likely to never leave those walls again once stepping inside, he understandably balked a little.

Naruto, as though reading his thoughts, glanced back. "Keep moving, Uchiha," he said, uncharacteristically serious. "You're about ten yards away from 'returned willingly.' You could do worse than the village you were born in." Sasuke didn't respond, but he jumped down after Naruto and Sakura into the road that led out of and into Konoha, then followed them past the guards and through the gate.

Their shadows immediately walked in after them and blocked their party from moving forward or back.

"Uchiha Sasuke," one of them said. "You are charged with abandonment of your village and collaboration with Konoha's enemies, in addition to injuring a Leaf-nin in the course of your attempted retrieval. Please follow me." Sasuke, who didn't care one way or the other, shoved his hands into his pockets in a sign defenselessness (or disrespect), and did so. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Naruto and Sakura walk up to one of the masked shinobi and begin talking in soft tones, or rather, _softer_ tones than usual. He wasn't sure Naruto was actually capable of quiet speech. He felt Naruto's eyes on his back the entire trek out of the blond man's sight.

Four hours later, he entered the apartment he suspected would be the last place he ever slept. It was an apartment complex right in the center of the village, different from other complexes only by its location (next to the headquarters of the Hokage) and the fact that it had no windows and an ANBU guard stationed at the door of every inhabitant. There was a bedroom with a bed, a chest of drawers, and a couch, and a bathroom with a toilet, sink, and bath/shower. He was to be a good boy and wait patiently until the Hokage and Council got to his trial, for which he would not be present and was allowed no representation, and the result of which he would likely discover only after it had been decided, stamped, and signed. He was allowed no visitors. Somehow, this made the whole situation a little better. At least he wouldn't have to see anyone he used to care about before they executed him.

He still wasn't completely healed, he was hungry, and he needed a shower and a change of clothes. Instead, he fell into the bed and went to sleep.

o o o

Sannin Tsunade, Godaime Hokage, former pupil of Sandaime Hokage and former teammate of Sannin Jiraiya and Sannin Orochimaru, stared over her desk at the young man in her office doing his best impression of a drowned cat. Uchiha Sasuke stared back. He had the vague impression that she wanted to laugh at him, but was refraining in favor of looking intimidating. He manfully resisted scowling at her, and also beating the ANBU behind him, who had thrown water at him before allowing him to come before her to a bloody pulp. They had claimed he smelled, since he had not showered in the two weeks that he had been back. He reserved judgment.

Finally, Tsunade sat back in her seat, opened a file by her elbow, shook out a piece of paper inside, and began. "'Uchiha Sasuke, you have been charged with abandonment of your village for a period of five years, endangering and injuring fellow Konoha ninja with the intent to kill, and collaboration with said village's enemies. You have been found guilty on all counts by unanimous vote of the Council and Godaime Hokage,' that would be me," she added before continuing, "'and for this, the penalty is death.'" Sasuke nodded. He'd known that. "However," Tsunade continued, setting the paper aside. "As a certain blond chuunin in my employ quite energetically pointed out to me, you have also returned willingly, bringing with you the deaths of two of our most dangerous missing-nin." Sasuke internally rolled his eyes, picturing (quite accurately) Naruto bursting into the Hokage's office, screaming Sasuke's merits and waving his arms wildly. "Therefore, as I am the final say in your sentence, I have granted you life. With conditions."

Sasuke blinked. …Well, he hadn't expected _that_. He was a tool, and he had effectively stolen himself to use as he pleased, thus putting many Konoha secrets firmly in the hands of her enemies. He was supposed to die. Hell, he _should_ die. He felt vaguely annoyed that the Hokage didn't share his opinion on the matter. Tsunade picked up the paper again and continued to read aloud.

"'You are henceforth stripped of your title of genin of the Leaf, though not genin, and placed under house arrest until the Council decides your true merit, and then will be allowed to earn your right to take the chuunin exam. You are to have a guard, chosen by the Hokage, with you at all times. This is for your own protection and to ensure you follow the rules of your parole. You are under no circumstances to use your chakra or attempt to train in taijutsu, and will not be allowed to own and carry weapons until either the Council or Hokage judge you fit. If at any point the Council feels you have failed to comply, you will be executed immediately.' And we won't tell you we're gonna do it when we decide to, so watch your step, kid." She nodded at the ANBU behind him. "You will go back to your assigned apartment now and wait until your guard shows up to get you." With that, she turned away, and picked up the next file on her desk. Sasuke assumed this was a dismissal, bowed (if he'd learned anything from Orochimaru, it was politeness to authority), and left, the two guards not so much leading him as scrambling behind him to catch up.

He went straight back to his cell and waited for his guard, the ANBU standing vigilantly outside his door. An hour later he was still waiting. He wanted vaguely to break something, but didn't have the energy (or the something). He settled for glaring at his pillow.

Screw the Council and Tsunade, anyway. What did they know about what he'd done or hadn't done? Stupid Naruto, for sticking his nose where it didn't belong. Again. Sasuke went and sat on the pillow, leaning back against the headboard of the bed and fuming. First, Naruto had the audacity to follow Sasuke. Then, he found him right after he'd fought Itachi and dragged him back to this hell-hole. And if that wasn't enough, he'd gone and intervened in his execution for breaking one of the basic laws of being a shinobi. And now, he was left to deal with the fact that he had gone on some stupid as all fuck crusade to kill the only person in his family left to tell him what the fuck they all were thinking when they up and died, leaving him all alone… he stopped thinking about _that_ and moved on, as he'd been doing every waking hour for the past two weeks. To top it all off, Naruto hadn't even tried to visit, and had left him alone with thoughts he didn't want until the damned Council had deemed him important enough to actually deal with, and his guard still wasn't here and it was somehow _all Naruto's fault_.

At this point the door slammed open, and the object of all his anger stood there, orange, black, and glowering. Sasuke blinked, surprised. He hadn't actually expected Naruto to show _up_… he glowered back, irrationally annoyed that Naruto had shown up just as Sasuke was getting good and mad at him for not doing so. "Let's go," Naruto growled and spun on his heel.

Sasuke glared at him. "I'm waiting for my guard," he answered coldly.

"I _am_ your guard Uchiha. Now _move_ before I make you."

Sasuke sighed. Of course. Only he would be subject to such torture. He got up and followed Naruto, hearing angry mutterings all the way. Without warning, Naruto stopped walking. "Where do you live?" he snapped out, not looking at Sasuke.

Sasuke's eyes narrowed even further. "The Uchiha compound, moron." Naruto spun around and gave him a glare that would have sent anyone else running.

"Seriously? I would never have figured _that_ one out. _WHICH HOUSE?_" Sasuke blinked. Why was Naruto mad at _him_, anyway? It wasn't _his_ fault he was in this god-forsaken mess…in fact it was the other way around.

"Main house, idiot," he answered sullenly. Naruto spun back and they continued their walk across the village, Naruto muttering the entire way about 'figures he'd still be living there,' and 'Orochimaru' and 'sullen, mopey bastard' and 'no wonder he went bat shit'. Sasuke said nothing, choosing to ignore the man walking before him in favor of regaining his apathy. He was, unsurprisingly, failing miserably, the muttering drilling its way into his skull and refusing to be cowed in its mission of driving him, to borrow a term, 'bat shit.'

When they reached the Uchiha compound, however, he stopped dead in his tracks. "They painted it," he said in shock.

"Of course they painted it. It's not like _you_ were here to, and they couldn't just let it go to ruins. It's a _big_ house. It would get the village a lot of money. Now stop gaping and come on." Sasuke decided to overlook the fact that the Konoha Powers That Be were going to sell _his_ house in favor of more pressing matters.

"But it's all _red_," he whined. "Obnoxiously red. What were they _thinking?_"

"Well your house colors are red, blue, and white, aren't they? So, they chose a color. Cheaper if you buy in bulk." Naruto was looking vaguely vindicated, but Sasuke was too distressed to notice.

"So why didn't they choose blue, or white? Blue and white are normal house colors. Red houses are ugly."

"So are you. Now get over it and _come on_. You're not supposed to care, remember?"

Sasuke did remember, and he went back to sullenly trying to radiate apathy, the dazzlingly red walls irritating his peripheral vision. Naruto walked up the walkway and opened the door, apparently immune to glaringly bright colors due to years of wearing orange. "Are you coming, or are you going to stand outside and wait for it to rain so you can perfect your image?" Sasuke tilted his chin up, and walked through the door Naruto had opened for him as regally as possible. Well, he thought, I'm back. The door slammed behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

_Tap, tap, tap, tap… taptaptap, taptaptap, tap, tap tap, taptaptap…_ Sasuke's right eye twitched. Of all the guards in the entire village, he had to have _Naruto_.

Naruto, it seemed, had not managed to learn patience in the time Sasuke had been gone. The blond young man had begun by pacing loudly outside the sliding panel that separated Sasuke's room from the rest of the house, muttering angrily all the while and effectively disturbing his charge's peace. After a while the pacing had stopped, but the muttering had continued. Then, after about half an hour of blessed near inactivity, his guard's attention span had apparently been exhausted, and now he was tapping on Sasuke's wall, experimenting with different rhythms. None of them were good.

Sasuke, finally unable to take it anymore, got up and slammed open the door. "Naruto," he said, his voice dangerously calm, "_stop._" He felt his eyebrow twitch in annoyance. Naruto looked like he was going to protest, but wisely refrained.

"Fine," he snapped instead, sounding and looking like a petulant child with his arms crossed and head turned away from Sasuke.

"Fine!" Sasuke snapped back, and slammed the door. It was satisfyingly loud in the suddenly quiet house.

Two hours later, Naruto still had not made a peep, and it was throwing Sasuke off his game. Somehow, this quiet was more annoying than when the dead last was being loud. He kept getting distracted from his thoughts by images of Naruto's tongue rebelling from lack of exercise and attempting to choke its owner. Sasuke didn't want a dead body sitting right outside his door. That was a little more disturbing than even _he_ could stand. He went over to the door again and opened it slowly. It creaked. He made a mental note to fix that later.

Naruto was sitting outside, perfectly calm, studying something or other. Sasuke tried to make the words _Naruto_ and _studying_ in the same sentence without a _not_ in between them fit into his world view and failed.

Naruto looked up, putting the book on the unswept floor, front cover down, as he did so. "You hungry?"

"No." Sasuke went to close the door. He was stopped from doing so by Naruto's foot. Sasuke blinked. Naruto had gotten faster.

"You don't understand. I can't eat until you do, and I'm starving. _You hungry_?"

"No," Sasuke repeated. "Move, moron."

Naruto moved his foot, glaring. Sasuke shut the door in his guard's face and threw himself gracelessly onto his bed, his stomach rumbling. Damn Naruto, now he was _thinking about it_. Konoha used to have the best fried squid stall just two streets over. He wondered if it was still there. Orochimaru hadn't believed in things like fried squid. Although Kabuto had been an awful cook anyway. He made the crap Sasuke ate when he was on the run for two years after leaving Sound look like a gourmet feast. This of course reminded him of that restaurant across town… His stomach rumbled again.

"Sakura-chan!" Naruto suddenly shouted, interrupting his thoughts. He heard Naruto's footsteps recede, then return a few minutes later, now accompanied by another set of (much lighter) footsteps. "But can't I just have _one_?" the dead last was complaining.

"No, Naruto. It's not my fault you didn't think to pack anything to eat. These are for Sasuke."

"You brought _him_ something to eat and you didn't think to bring something for _me_? I thought you were trying to fatten me up!"

"I'm not trying to 'fatten you up'! I'm _trying_ to get you to eat a balanced diet!"

"Same thing… _ow!_" Then the door opened, and Sasuke had a glimpse of Naruto cradling his wrist to his chest as though it had just gotten slapped, before Sakura walked in and shut the door behind her. The now-familiar sound of Naruto muttering angrily came, muffled, from behind the door. Sasuke lay back on his bed and pointedly stared at the ceiling.

"Hi, Sasuke," she said. Sasuke noted off-handedly that she'd left of the honorific. "I thought you might be hungry…"

"He's not!" came the shout through the door.

"AND," Sakura continued as though Naruto hadn't interrupted, "I brought you something to eat." She presented him with a small brown box.

Sasuke didn't respond, relying on his stony silence to gain the upper hand. Somehow, this didn't faze Sakura as it had his Sound-ninja subordinates. She merely continued cheerfully, when it became clear that he wasn't going to participate in the conversation. "They're rice balls. I made them myself. I wasn't sure what you liked in them, so I put a little fish and some pickled plums. There should be enough to last you until dinner." She walked over to a table and placed the box on top of it. Then, she turned back to Sasuke and looked at him expectantly. "So, how have you been? You know, since coming home and all?"

Sasuke finally sat up and turned to her, raising an eyebrow. Sakura sighed. "I'll be outside if you need me then." She turned and left the room.

"Ok, Naruto," Sasuke heard through the door. "I'll watch him. You have an hour to go eat."

"Thank you, Sakura-chan! Thankyouthankyouthankyou!"

"Eat some vegetables!" Sasuke heard her call after the sounds of Naruto's fast retreat out of the house. The front door closed with a _snap_.

When he was fairly sure Naruto was far enough away to not know what he was doing, he went over to the box and picked up a rice ball. One bite told him he was _really hungry_. The second told him the food was good. _Very_ good. He ate another. And another after that. Five minutes later, he was looking at an empty box, and feeling slightly disappointed (and very full). Oh well. He licked his fingers, and lay down spread-eagled on the floor, once again staring at the ceiling. For lack of something better to do, he gave himself a goal: memorize every inch of the dirty, plain expanse above him without sharingan by the end of the day.

He must've fallen asleep, because next thing he knew, he heard Naruto's footsteps coming down the hall. Judging by the vibrations he felt through the floorboards, Naruto had gained about 7 pounds with his meal. The footsteps stopped in front of the door and something hit the ground with a thud.

"Naruto!" he heard Sakura exclaim. "That's two month's worth of ration bars in your backpack."

"Yes, Sakura. Yes it is."

"But, but, where, who…_Why_?"

"That pathetic piece of work in there hasn't eaten for two weeks. I talked to the ANBU who were guarding his door, so don't tell me I'm exaggerating. I've decided I'm _not_ going to wait on him to eat. I'll eat when _I _am hungry"

"First of all, if you subsist on ration bars, you'll never live to see Hokage. Second of all, we're a team, and I wouldn't just leave you here to starve. Give me those bars, and I'll bring you a healthy, balanced meal three times a day, ok?"

"No."

"_Naruto…_"

"No, Sakura. I'm seventeen. I can take care of myself. Besides, I lived on Ramen until I was fifteen. Ration bars are much healthier than that."

"Fine, but I'll still bring you food, so don't get too full. I'm going to go say bye to Sasuke now." Sasuke wondered why they assumed he couldn't hear them through the door. It was made primarily of rice paper, after all. While he was pondering this, the door slid open. Sakura took in Sasuke lying on the floor, with the now-empty box still sitting exactly where she had left it.

"Well, I'm leaving now Sasuke," she told him cheerfully, walking over to get to the box as she did so. "I'll be back later with some more food. I hear that they might let you out to start some minor training soon, and you'll need a little energy for that." She smiled at him brightly, and left again.

I'll see you later, Naruto," she told Sasuke's guard. Presumably, Naruto made some motion meant to say goodbye, because he heard her footsteps walk away from the room and leave through the front door. He sighed, and rolled over onto his side, closing his eyes again. He was asleep a few minutes later.

o o o

The days flowed together, as days do when one has nowhere to go and nothing in particular to look forward to. Sasuke stayed in his room, despite several gentle reminders from Sakura that being under house arrest meant he had to stay in the _house_, not the _bed_. Naruto had actually been surprisingly silent on the matter, though from the way he'd been acting towards Sasuke, the Uchiha thought this may have had more to do with not wanting to interact with his charge than any real understanding of why Sasuke didn't seem to want to move.

He was sleeping in a guest room. He'd chosen it because it was relatively clean, had no windows, and he couldn't remember spending much time in it as a child, something that wasn't so for the rest of the rest of the house. There were _ghosts_ in the rest of the house. Sasuke knew this, because he'd been haunted by them for nearly five years before leaving to get stronger. His father's study. The kitchen, where his mother waited for him to come home every day. The dojo. His old bedroom. _Itachi's_ old bedroom. Even the front hallway wasn't free of memories.

He hated this house. Hated it, not because it held some of his worst memories, but because it held some of his _best_. He hated thinking about that time before Itachi massacred everything Sasuke loved, because if he allowed himself to remember, he'd begin to think about the questions he had no answers to.

_Why?_

_When did you change? _

_How did I miss it? _

_Did you ever love me?_

Sasuke used to spend hours mulling over these questions, taking out each and every memory and examining it, as though it were a complex jutsu he could master if only he broke it down to its key elements. Of course, he had never found answers. The only person who had _had_ answers was Itachi, and _that man_ hadn't been there. It was useless, _useless_ to spend time and energy that would be better spent training on pointless, answerless questions.

With this conclusion firmly in mind, he'd gone to Sound. To become stronger, and to kill his brother. Now, he'd killed his brother, had no distractions from the questions, and still didn't have any answers. He'd have laughed, or cried, but that would have meant actually _feeling_ something other than the emptiness he'd cultivated like a shield over the past five years to protect him from the painful memories licking at the back of his mind like the tide.

No way in hell. Not if he had anything to say about it. He'd stay in this bleak, achingly empty house and _rot_ first.

And so a week passed.

o o o

Sasuke was asleep when the summons from the Hokage arrived for Naruto. Surprisingly, or perhaps not-so-surprisingly considering that Sasuke was a criminal under house arrest and Naruto was his guard, it was delivered in the form of a messenger rather than by eagle as summons were usually. Unfortunately, this meant Sasuke wasn't expecting the foreign presence that let itself into his house via the front door. This did not stop him from managing to be as far away from the door as possible, crouching with his back to the wall, reaching for a kunai that wasn't at his belt by the time it closed completely.

"Yeah?" Naruto addressed the nearing footsteps, standing up and turning towards what Sasuke presumed was the intruder (Sasuke could tell by the shadow of his guard through the rice paper wall).

"Uzumaki-san, the Hokage wishes you to meet with her about a matter concerning your charge." Sasuke forced himself to relax, sitting down on the floor with his back to the wall.

"You here to cover for me?" Naruto responded while bending down to pick something off the floor just as a new shadow came into view.

"Yes," the intruder answered.

"Humph. Don't know why the old hag thinks she needs to send an ANBU to guard someone who hasn't left his room for eight days…" Naruto muttered, straightening. "Right, I'll let him know about the change of guard, then." Footsteps towards, the door, and then Naruto was poking his head into the room. His eyes took in Sasuke's position as far from the door as possible, but in a show of tact of which Sasuke hadn't thought him capable, didn't comment on it. He also didn't bother to inform Sasuke why he was leaving (Sasuke had made it quite clear to both Naruto and Sakura that he could hear everything they said on the other side of the door two days ago, when he'd opened a door and thrown a pillow at Naruto for complaining too loudly about his 'mission' while Sasuke was trying to sleep).

"You need anything while I'm out?" Sasuke gave the blond young man in front of him his best apathetic face. Naruto shrugged, though his eyes did narrow a bit in a show of annoyance. Sasuke noted it as odd (Naruto had seemed to be making a point of not caring what Sasuke did or did not do this past week), and filed it in the back of his head as something to think about when he ran out of other mindless distractions. "Fine, no skin off my back," Naruto declared before closing the door. Sasuke listened to his footsteps recede and tried to shake the tense feeling from himself as his blond guard got further away from Sasuke and the ANBU member. Tensing up in the absence of the blond young man would imply Sasuke felt safer if Naruto was here to watch his back while he lay around and did nothing, and _that_ was frankly ridiculous. The Uchiha stoically ignored the little voice in the back of his head that pointed out, barring the two days he was practically passed out upon first returning, he hadn't done more than doze for a few hours at a stretch until being placed here under house arrest, and the new ability to sleep likely had little to do with the change in scenery and everything to do with the fact that he had never been able to stop trusting his current guard.

For whatever reason, Sasuke spent the next five hours (twenty-seven minutes and eighteen seconds; his internal clock was apparently back with a vengeance) tauter than stretched ninja wire and denying it with all his might. It didn't help that the shadow that was his ANBU guard didn't seem to even be _breathing_ through the wall. Sasuke had become used to the constant murmur of noise that even now Naruto seemed incapable of silencing. He did eventually move back to the bed, but even he had to admit that was more because he could tie a sheet around an enemy's and pull in lieu of a weapon than anything else.

It was a long five-and-a-half hours.

It was with extremely reluctant relief that he finally heard the front door slam open and (a much more exuberant) Naruto re-enter the house. He tromped back to the door to Sasuke's room, practically exuding cheerfulness with every step, and threw open the door. "Thanks for spelling me!" he called over his shoulder at the ANBU standing rigid near Sasuke's wall, and closed the door behind him with a much firmer _snap_ than Sasuke thought strictly necessary. He waited semi-patiently for the guard to exit the premises before turning to Sasuke and giving the darker young man a fox-like grin. "Good news! Sakura's a mother hen!"

Sasuke blinked, and then manfully resisted the urge to say something to the affect of "Whu…?" From the widening grin on Naruto's face, it was a wasted effort. He needed to work on his emotional transparency. He seemed to be slipping.

"She's worried that you sit in here on your ass all day and stare at the ceiling, so she pestered the old hag into allowing you access to the entire Uchiha compound. Including," Naruto paused for dramatic effect, "the training grounds!" He waited for several seconds, presumably to allow Sasuke to jump for joy and/or have ecstatic seizures. When Sasuke failed to do either, the grin melted into a now much-more-familiar scowl. "So that's it, then. You're just going to sit in here and let dust settle until you either can't move or die?" In answer, Sasuke lay down on the bed and rolled over. He could feel the glare attempting to drill holes through his back.

"That is _it_!" Naruto snapped, slamming Sasuke's door open and stomping out. "I'm sick and tired of this! I don't care _what_ the book says, it's not healthy for you to stay in a room with no windows all day and not do as much as leave it for a _shower_!" Sasuke was unable to resist looking at his guard incredulously at this.

"Book?" he asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Shut up, bastard. I've had _enough_ of this. You're going to move if I have to fucking _pick you up_ to make it happen!" With that, Naruto walked out the door (not bothering to close it again), marched out of the house, and was gone. About thirty seconds later, an ANBU slipped in the front door and took up position by it, not giving any indication that this was out of the ordinary. Sasuke's eyes narrowed, and he got up to close the door to his room himself. He enlisted the help of denial again to ignore the excitement threatening to show itself on his face in the form of a smirk. Naruto would be back, and if past experience was any indication, he'd bring Hell on earth with him.

o o o

Thank you so much to BakedBunny, Dragon77, and Three-Eyed Squirrels (my grammar beta hug) for the reviews. I'll try to respond to each of you (at the end of the chapter) until I start getting too many. Er… _if_ I start getting too many, that is. I'm not quite so sure it's an inevitability…

BakedBunny: Oh, but if I told you that, you wouldn't read on, would you? grin

Dragon77: Sasuke is asking himself the same question, believe me…

Three-Eyed Squirrels: …Damnit. Fixed!

Also, I'm thinking I may update once a week (on Sundays) for a while, because that gives me some time in between to work on the next chapter. With any luck, I'll keep ahead of my posting schedule… If I don't make the cut, I'll comment on my bio about it, so check there if you don't see an update!


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Whatever Sasuke had been expecting, it hadn't been this.

When Naruto finally came back from whatever it was he was doing for six damn hours (eight minutes and 52 seconds), he had marched into Sasuke's room and ordered him 'as your guard' to get up and follow him out of the house. Sasuke, of course, had ignored him, and would have continued to do so if the dead last hadn't pointed out that disobeying a direct order from a guard was against parole and one of the quickest ways to have the Hokage, council, and several ANBU come down on his head. Since Sasuke had slightly more respect for these people than he did for Naruto (they would at least put up a _bit_ of a fight…), he had found it prudent to follow the now rather cocky moron to wherever he wanted Sasuke to go.

Which is how Sasuke found himself standing in the old Uchiha bath house. It looked newly cleaned. Sasuke suspected judicious use of kage bunshin. He also had to clamp down on the urge to give Naruto a piece of his mind for messing with something on _Sasuke's_ property. He was, after all, still attempting to be apathetic. He stared at the steaming water and contemplated the possibility that Naruto had finally lost his mind completely.

"Right," Naruto said from just to his left, and he turned his attention to his (possibly unstable) guard. "Go wash off, and then sit in there for a while." He gestured to the bath. "If you must waste your life doing nothing, you will at least do it in different places. _This_ different place also involves you getting clean, which I have to say is definitely the best thing about it." Sasuke stared at him incredulously. Naruto looked back, jaw set in what Sasuke remembered was Naruto's "I'm more stubborn than a brick and changing my mind will be like hitting your head with one repeatedly" face. "You stink," the blond shinobi informed his charge gravely, "and the smell's _killing me_."

Sasuke scoffed. What the hell was this? Naruto, for all intents and purposes, had given every indication that he couldn't care less what Sasuke did, had in fact seemed rather put out to have to baby-sit Sasuke at all.

Naruto's eyes narrowed. "Look, you bastard. The way I see it, you have two choices. You can clean off and get in on your own, or I can _throw_ you in along with some soap, shower be damned, and you can clean the water tomorrow. Either way, you're getting in."

Sasuke sneered at the blond ninja in front of him. "Try it, dead last, and I'll…"

"You'll what?" Naruto interrupted. "You're not allowed to fight me, it's against parole. You _definitely_ can't use chakra because the entire compound is keyed to you and Tsunade-baa-chan _will_ come down her like Hell's fury and kick your ass. Then she'll drag you off to be interrogated and executed." Sasuke didn't doubt she'd _try_, at least. He was under the impression that the Godaime Hokage was loud, annoying, full of herself, and vainer than a cat. Not someone he really wanted to bother with at the moment… "So what's it gonna be, _Sasuke-chan_? You getting in under your own power or mine?" He waited a few seconds, and when Sasuke didn't answer, shrugged. "Have it your own way, then."

If Sasuke had been paying attention, Naruto would have never pulled off what happened next. If he'd been using sharingan, he'd have moved before it even started. As it was, the only warning Sasuke had before another Naruto pinned his arms at the elbows from behind and braced himself in such a way that Sasuke couldn't back kick him away was a flare of still-familiar chakra. The Uchiha was reduced to head-butting as his only option for dispelling the clone currently holding him fast.

Which he did.

With much enthusiasm.

Unfortunately for Sasuke, not only did the Naruto behind him fail to do more than 'oomph' at the blow that would have dispersed a kage bunshin, he shifted his weight and flipped Sasuke over his head in one smooth motion. Flipping through mid-air, Sasuke caught a glimpse of the Naruto he'd been talking to disappearing in a poof of smoke and the Naruto that attacked him wiping blood from his nose and split lip before his training took over. Sasuke kicked his legs and twisted so that he'd at least land on his feet. The landing resulted in a rather large splash, as he hadn't used chakra so that he could land on _top_ of the water instead of _in_ it. He didn't particularly want to test Naruto's theory about the Hokage's reaction.

He landed facing his opponent, his body working on automatic, his quick mind already delineating a plan to get the high ground back. Naruto wasn't in an attack stance, though. He was alert, but he seemed more worried about the blood on his fingers than about the convicted missing-nin he'd just chucked into the bath. Not to say he hadn't been watching everything Sasuke had been doing. He looked up and bared his teeth in a parody of a grin.

"Like a cat," he declared, wiping at his face one more time before the bleeding stopped and the split lip knit itself back up again. "You don't like water and you always land on your feet." He let the grin drop and chucked three objects at Sasuke's head in quick succession. "Here. Wash." Sasuke caught the first two on instinct and ducked as the last object sailed over his head. A quick glance at what his hands held identified them as a bar of soap and a scrub brush. Another quick look over his shoulder confirmed the last object as harmless as the former two (it was a rubber duck, by the way. Naruto seemed to have managed to hold onto his juvenile sense of humor). Then his eyes snapped back to what he'd been reminded was a well-trained shinobi of the village he'd betrayed: a threat.

Naruto seemed to sense Sasuke's change in attitude towards him, because he walked away towards a wall (not showing Sasuke his back, the brown-haired missing-nin noted), and sat down against it in a non-threatening but still easily maneuverable position, watching the young Uchiha to see if he'd do as he was told.

Sasuke relaxed as much as twanging survival instinct would let him and weighed his options. He could fight his way out on principle, but that would likely lead to injury and most certainly lead to execution. He could also just make use of the soap, warm water and brush that had been so conveniently placed in his possession and clean some of the grime off of himself. The second option was the better one. By far.

He hadn't really realized how dirty he actually was, not that he felt he could be blamed for this. Hygiene wasn't exactly foremost in his mind these days. The fact of the matter was, though, apart from an impromptu shower, compliments of the ANBU, before hearing his sentence, Sasuke hadn't washed in the three weeks he'd been back in Konoha. He couldn't remember when he'd last been clean before that. He hadn't been thinking about hygiene that much while on the run, either.

He stripped out of his drenched, dirty clothes and tossed them over onto the side of the bath, then made good use of the soap and scrub brush. Layers of dried blood and mud that had ground into his skin peeled off of him, staining the water around him in a dirty ring. Clumps of both fell out of his hair as he scrubbed at it vigorously, along with some things he couldn't identify and didn't care to. He felt like a snake shedding a skin too small for it.

It felt _wonderful_.

When he was finished, he got out of the water near where he'd thrown his clothes (he _really_ didn't want to put them back on, now. They were filthy) and looked back at the bath. The water now appeared the way he'd expected it to when he'd seen where Naruto was leading him: like it had been abandoned for nine nears. Somehow, that felt even better than being clean. Like putting something back the way it was supposed to be.

Naruto broke into Sasuke's thoughts by dumping yet more water on him from a bucket. Sasuke spluttered, and then glared. Naruto shrugged. "Just rinsing the dirty water off," he said, not sounding sorry in the least (not that Sasuke was expecting him to sound sorry. He'd never been that optimistic). "Here." He held out a few towels and some new clothing. "Figured you wouldn't want to change back into what you've been wearing." The clothing consisted of a black tank top and training pants, along with black sandals and boxers. If the tags were any indication, they were all new. Sasuke stared at the offered items. Was Naruto trying to call a truce like Sasuke thought he was? Naruto shifted uncomfortably.

"No Uchiha fan of course, sorry, but they're easy to move around in and comfortable, so you can wear them while you're brooding or if you ever get off your ass to start training again. You're allowed to train in taijutsu now," he reminded. "I got you a few changes of everything. Or, I got Sakura to get you a few changes of everything. Probably better that way. I told her not to get anything orange because I figured you wouldn't want it and she looked at me like that was really obvious." Naruto rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. Sasuke continued to stare, dripping onto the ground. Naruto scowled. "But if you'd _really_ rather just wear what you've been wearing, you're welcome." He began to withdraw the offerings.

Sasuke snatched them before Naruto could fully pull them out of reach, quickly dried off with the towels and put on the clothes. They _were_ comfortable; he'd give the dead last _that_ at least. "Have I filled my quotient for 'out and about' yet?" he asked sardonically to cover up the motion.

Naruto looked at him, puzzled. "Yeah, you're done." Without saying another word, Sasuke turned his back and began walking back to the house. It was the first time he'd done it all afternoon since Naruto got the drop on him, an opening to any opponent who knew even remotely what he was doing: an acceptance of Naruto's concession and one of his own. He wondered if the guard would notice.

He did, and Sasuke knew when he realized he could hear Naruto's footsteps clearly behind him all the way home. He nodded inwardly. Good. Concession acknowledged, truce accepted.

Maybe this would end up okay after all.

ooo

The next few days dragged into a week, and a routine of sorts developed. After discovering his apparent ability to drag Sasuke out of his room using the treat of Tsunade, Naruto took to banging on Sasuke's door at 4 in the morning and shouting at him to get out of bed. Sasuke did, but only because he wanted to take a shower and change his clothes (now that he was clean, he figured he might as well stay that way). By the time he'd done this, Sakura had stopped by with breakfast before her shift at 6:30, and she spent the next hour yelling at Naruto until he ate it. Sasuke was beginning to wonder where her apparent interest in Naruto's diet came from, if only because the story must be interesting to get Sakura so consistently worked up. Once or twice, Naruto left after breakfast for an hour, coming back at 6 am when Sakura had to leave to get to the hospital on time. The blond guard didn't tell Sasuke what he'd been doing, and Sasuke didn't ask. It was, after all, none of his business.

After Sakura left, promising to come back at noon with lunch (much to Naruto's dismay), Sasuke usually found himself dragged to one corner of the Uchiha compound or other and given the orders to "mope or whatever" while Naruto busied himself and a large number of kage bunshins with all manner of other fix-it jobs that had Sasuke wondering just when Naruto had traded in his hitae-ate for a job as a handy-man. He usually ended up helping eventually, for lack of anything better to do, and they'd work steadily until it was nearly noon and they had to go back to the house or risk inciting the wrath of a too-health-conscious Haruno Sakura, and after lunch Sasuke would go back to his room, or wander around the house and fix the things that caught his eye, or go out to the dock and sit there instead of inside. Naruto would sit outside the room or train out under the sun while Sasuke stared out over the pond where he'd learned his first serious technique and got lost in his thoughts. Sasuke never trained with him. It was one thing to stretch his legs a little, but quite another to work up the energy to do something productive like get himself back into top form.

On the eighth day of this, Sasuke opted for outside after lunch. He sat on the peer and idly skipped stones while Naruto went through a series of taijutsu moves behind him. "Oi, dead last," he said eventually (while Naruto was in a particularly unsteady position, not-so-coincidently), and waited until Naruto had picked himself up off the ground after losing his balance at the interruption before asking "why the sudden interest in the state of the Uchiha complex?" Naruto shrugged.

"Not like you care," he pointed out, but when Sasuke turned his head to look at him instead of the water, he gave a bit more of an answer. "Well, I'm stuck here same as you until your house arrest's over, and this place feels like a fucking graveyard to me. I figure I'm gonna get enough of that when I'm dead, I don't need to live in one while I'm _alive_."

Sasuke, didn't respond, turning back to the water again, and Naruto began his next form. The Uchiha fought down the urge to tell the dead last chuunin that the Uchiha compound _was_ a graveyard, his _family's_ graveyard, and no amount of cleaning would ever change that. He also didn't tell Naruto that he was getting rather tired of being repeatedly banged over the head with the fact that he'd let that graveyard his family had once called home fall to ruins.

Instead he just stared at the water, and listened to the small ripples lap at the base of the dock.

ooo

He didn't get up the next morning when Naruto banged on his door. The air tasted heavy, like a storm was coming, and he was in a particularly foul mood for some reason even _he_ couldn't explain, and just wanted to lay in bed and not _think_ anymore about anything.

Naruto, being Naruto, didn't take the hint. He waited until Sakura had left for her shift, then came storming into Sasuke's room and glared at the Uchiha in the bed like he was trying to set him aflame. Sasuke being Sasuke, this did absolutely nothing.

"Get up," Naruto snapped. Sasuke rolled to face the wall. "Why _not_?" Naruto responded as though Sasuke had argued passionately.

"No point," Sasuke answered. "There's nothing important out there worth looking at."

"Except the place you grew up," Naruto bit out. "Or is that 'nothing important' to you nowadays? What next? You gonna wake up one morning and decide to kill the entirety of Konoha to _test your strength_?" Sasuke bristled, and turned again to look at the young man in his room.

"Nobody in Konoha is _worth_ the _effort_," he sneered. Naruto sneered back.

"The way _you_ weren't worth the effort? You self-righteous _asshole_, you sound just like _Itachi_."

Sasuke's fist connected with Naruto's face. It threw the blond guard through the rice paper wall, across the hall, and through the slightly more substantial rice paper door. He hit the ground with enough momentum to roll him down a small hill and into the pond. Needless to say, it took him a little bit to pick himself up and drag himself out of the water. It was just enough time for Sasuke to get close enough to flying tackle the fucking dead last asshole. They landed with Naruto on his back underneath Sasuke, who was straddling him. The familiar position was lost on Sasuke at the moment, however. He grabbed the front of the dead last's shirt and dragged him up until their faces were only a few inches apart. "Say. That. Again," he dared his opponent with false calm.

"What," Naruto bared his teeth in a cruel grin, "don't like being compared to the man who betrayed everything he claimed to care about for power? The man who went missing-nin and joined one of Konoha's greatest enemies because he didn't think the village was _good enough_? Seems like a _sound_ comparison to me!" Sasuke punched him again, and felt some satisfaction when the blow propelled him backwards into the ground.

"Shut up!" he shouted. "I left for the power to avenge my family!" Naruto used the leverage from the ground to flip Sasuke off him, and Sasuke had barely enough time to center from the landing before the blond man was on him, fist aiming for his gut. Sasuke dodged and round-house kicked at the dead last's _head_.

Naruto deflected the kick with this arms (there was a crack as bone broke), and he used the momentum of the kick to force him back on his arms and push off into a kick aimed as Sasuke's ribcage. It connected. Sasuke heard the some ribs snap when it did. "You certainly left for _power_!" Naruto shouted back. "Left everything behind to get _strong_ enough to kill your older brother. Left your_self_ behind! Was it worth it, bastard?"

It hadn't been, because somewhere along the way Sasuke had crossed the line from 'vengeance' to 'revenge,' from an action done out of love for someone else to an action done solely for yourself. He'd not killed his brother for his family. He'd killed him because he _could_, and because he _wanted to_, and now he had to face the fact that he had spent nine years working towards something that, far from resulting in the appeasement of his family's ghosts, had only made them wait in a ruined compound until he came back, worse off than before, to where he'd started when he was eight. Only this time, Itachi's ghost haunted him too.

"You don't fucking know what you're talking about," he nearly screamed, slamming an elbow into Naruto's own ribcage and propelling him into a tree, knocking the wind out of him. "You never had a family to _lose_!" The words sounded familiar, like something he'd said before. He probably had. It was still true.

"I…did…_too_," Naruto wheezed, before suddenly coming at Sasuke low and sweeping his legs out from under him. Caught temporarily off-balance, Sasuke couldn't counter the blow that hit him under the chin and forced his head up with a _snap_. He bit his tongue at the impact and fell backwards onto the ground, rolling and coming up in a crouch. "I had _you_, you _asshole_! It was the first time I'd ever had a family in my _life_! _You_ still didn't, though, because you wouldn't _let_ any of us be! And you're _still doing it!_" Sasuke dodged Naruto's next kick, but wasn't _quite_ fast enough to miss the heel coming down on his spine. He went face first into the ground, rolled, grabbed Naruto's still extended foot and _pulled_. Naruto landed on top of him, taking Sasuke's elbow to his already-cracked ribs again in the process. He grimaced, then took the opportunity to punch Sasuke in the jaw again. The black-haired man was pretty sure it was broken. "What's it gonna take, Sasuke?" Naruto growled in this face. "A damn engraved invitation that says 'the people who _give a damn_ about Uchiha Sasuke cordially invite him to _get over himself_, _grow up_, and _realize he isn't alone_'?"

"I'd…rather be," Sasuke forced out from his now rather swollen jaw.

"Tough shit, we won't _let _you be. _I _won't let you be," Naruto responded, scowling at his friend with eyes that blazed red. Sasuke was honestly not sure if the Kyuubi had surfaced because Naruto was so angry or because of the injuries. Probably a little of both. Sasuke sighed, the fight going out of him.

"I know," he muttered, wincing at the pain that shot up his jaw at the effort. He wondered if he sounded as depressed at that as he felt. Naruto's scowl lightened.

"Hey, it's not the end of the world. There are worse fates than having help when you need it." He jumped to his feet then, wincing a little as his ribs protested (he'd taken two solid hits to them, Sasuke remembered. He wondered if any were broken), wiped some blood off his mouth (wherever it came from seemed to be healed) then offered Sasuke a hand. "Come on, let's go wait for Sakura to come and fix you up a bit. Then we'll fix the hole in your door." Sasuke, who did not have the Kyuubi holder's healing ability and thus would not be doing any _bouncing_ anytime soon, got to his feet much more slowly. He didn't take the hand. Naruto withdrew it without seeming the least bit offended. Then the two trudged back up to the house to wait the next few hours until a very irate medic-nin would come and look them over.

ooo

"I can't _believe_ you two," Sakura said for about the hundredth time as she gently put her fingers on Sasuke's jaw to heal it. Considering it was now twice it's normal size and rather painful, Sasuke didn't respond. Naruto did, though.

"It was just taijutsu, Sakura-chan! It's not like we were going to _kill_ each other or something!"

"Remind me to have Lee come over and tell you about how many people he's killed," Sakura snapped, pressing a little too firmly on Sasuke's jaw. Sasuke didn't wince, mainly because Uchihas weren't allowed to.

Naruto shrugged, lying back on the floor, hands behind his head and watching them. Sakura had already checked him out, bitching about inexcusable risks and blatant male stupidity the whole time. Sasuke had been vaguely afraid her head was going to explode when she'd seen what he'd done to Naruto's ribs (a few _had_ been broken it seemed, and even Kyuubi couldn't heal broken bones in three hours). "Still, could have been worse. Sasuke-bastard could have used chakra, and then we'd have had the whole of ANBU raining down on our heads."

"I almost wish he had," Sakura muttered, finishing with Sasuke's jaw and moving onto his sprained ankle (she'd dealt with his ribs first, as the injury with the most potential to cause serious further injury). Now free to talk, as his jaw was little more than a bit bruised, he joined the conversation.

"I didn't need chakra to beat that idiot into the ground," he sneered at the blond man spread out in his hallway. In truth, he'd been so angry and had gotten so used to not relying on chakra in the past few weeks he hadn't even thought about it. Not that these two needed to know _that_.

"Oi!" Naruto snapped, sitting up quickly and then wincing a little at his still-sore ribs. "Say that again when you're allowed to, bastard, and we'll see who'll be beating who."

"Whom," Sakura corrected absently, now finished taping Sasuke's ankle and looking at his knee. "You're lucky you didn't rip your ACL," she told her patient, taping as she spoke. "Keep this iced and don't put weight on it for a few days. I'd say a few weeks and prescribe some pain killers, but I'm not that optimistic." Naruto snickered. Sasuke ignored them both.

"Alright, that's done," Sakura said finally, sitting up and dusting off her hands before looking at their shadows to gauge the time. "And now I'm late. Wonderful. Thank you both so much. I'll be back after my shift with dinner, and lunch is in the kitchen. Take it easy today. Both of you."

Naruto rolled his eyes and got carefully to his feet to walk her to the door. "You know us, Sakura. Safety above all else."

"Smart-aleck," the young woman responded, cuffing him in the back of the head. Her tone was fond, though, and Sasuke left to lie down in his room instead of dealing with the weird feelings that tone raised in his stomach.

He brought the ice pack, though.

ooo

Sakura did come back after her shift, at about seven o'clock like she always did. She came in the back-way (Naruto had repaired the door and the wall between visits), and brought with her a series of energy-enriched health foods that made Naruto groan in fake agony and Sasuke wonder what the hell she thought they had done all day. She made them both eat the food, though, claiming that they needed the energy to boost their body's healing abilities. By which Sasuke assumed she meant _his_ healing abilities. Naruto was almost entirely healed now; just a little labored breathing sometimes and a few winces when he moved too fast. So he dutifully ate the food and stoically endured the long check-up after dinner. At least she checked Naruto first again. The blond shinobi spent the entire time squirming away from her hand on his rib cage, complaining that it tickled. Sakura eventually gave up after about half-an-hour, grumbling about idiots who don't take care of themselves and are eventually going to get killed in some insanely stupid way.

They did the check-up in Sasuke's room, since he'd moved back there after dinner and Sakura had insisted he stay put for at least the rest of her stay. Since staying put was his plan anyway, he'd humored her. Like before, she started with his ribs.

"These should be fine in about a week," she informed him, rebinding his chest as she did so. "They weren't too badly broken to begin with. You're pretty lucky, actually, Naruto hits hard these days." She moved onto his jaw, which she pronounced perfectly fine if bruised, and then to his ankle and knee.

"Like I said before, your knee is badly sprained with hairline rips in some of the surrounding muscles. It should be fine if you _stay off of it_ and keep it iced. I can speed up the healing process if you want, but with muscle and ligament tears it's better not to do too much at once."

"That's fine," Sasuke told her dismissively. It wasn't as though he planned to be doing anything that he'd need his knee for, after all. Sakura nodded, and stood, but didn't leave the room.

"I talked to Shishou earlier, and she told me to inform you that you are now allowed to use chakra in emergency situations. I'm going to ask you to use it if something happens to an injury during the night."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, honestly confused. She had, after all, just told him everything was fine and should heal cleanly. "Do you expect there to be a problem?" he asked logically. She bit her lip.

"Maybe I'm just being paranoid, but… well, just for my peace of mind, Sasuke. Promise me. Please." Sasuke looked at her carefully. She looked rather tense, as though she wasn't being entirely truthful about the situation. He frowned. He knew his own body rather well, being a considerably powerful shinobi, and was pretty sure there wasn't anything particularly inhibiting or dangerous wrong with it. Finally, he shrugged. If she really was just being overly thorough, it was hardly as though it would matter either way, after all.

"Whatever," he said. "I'm going to sleep."

Some of the tension left the pink-haired healer's frame. "Good idea," she agreed. "I'll just tell Naruto about the chakra, then I'll leave and go to bed myself. I'll see you tomorrow, alright?" Sasuke didn't respond, opting instead to lie down on his bed and close his eyes. "Alright. Goodnight, Sasuke-kun." As she walked out the door, the dark-haired shinobi wondered at the return of the honorific, and whether or not it meant anything. He fell asleep that night without reaching any conclusions.

ooo

It wasn't until the next morning, when the dead last didn't pound on his door to get up at the ridiculously early hour of four that Sasuke began to wonder if perhaps the warning about using his chakra in case of emergency hadn't been for him.

When he limped out into the hall and saw Naruto still in his sleeping bag, covered in cold sweat, breathing shallowly and unconscious, he knew so.

ooo

Okay, I think I forgot to do this before, so I'll do it now and you can all just assume this is true for the rest of the fic:

Disclaimer—I don't own Naruto. Therefore, suing me would be useless, as I am not getting any royalties and would be able to pay you _absolutely nothing_. broke

Thank you to Three-Eyed Squirrels, Dragon77 and Boshoku for the reviews.

Dragon77: Yes, yes they are. Hehehe...

Boshoku: cracks up That is one of the most amazing images _ever_. Thank you for making my day.

Three-Eyed Squirrels: -squishes-


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4

Sasuke's first instinct these days when he felt in any way threatened was to activate sharingan. In this case, this was a good idea for two reasons. The first was it meant he had ample time to get out of the way when three ANBU came through the door faster than most people could blink. The second was it allowed him one very good look at his guard, which needless to say did not leave him very happy. Naruto, who had been fine just the night before, was in shock and quite possibly in a coma.

Then he caught sight of one of the ANBU moving to obscure his vision and redirected his attention, moving into a fighting stance. The shinobi in front of him either didn't notice or didn't care. "Uchiha-san, I would appreciate it if you disengaged your sharingan and went back into your room. I will be your guard until Uzumaki-san can resume his duties." Sasuke opened his mouth to argue, but from the way the ANBU stiffened he had orders to restrain his new charge if he felt the need to do so, and Sasuke really did not feel like fighting his way out of his own house at the moment. He did as he was told.

Once inside, he weighed his options. Two of the ANBU had picked Naruto up and left quickly towards the entrance to the compound. He could either sit in his room like a good little captive and let the Hokage think he was scared of her and the people she commanded or he could sneak out and find out what the hell was going on. Those ANBU had reacted too quickly to the chakra flare to have been doing anything other than waiting for a signal of emergency. Sasuke wanted to know why his guard had passed from fully functioning to comatose in a night. He was also rather curious as to why Sakura, the Hokage and three ANBU had known of the possibility while he hadn't.

"I know what you're thinking," a familiar voice said from the door, "and it's not a good idea." Sasuke spun, inwardly cursing, to come face-to-face with Hatake Kakashi. Sasuke's former genin sensei was leaning up against the door frame, a green book in one hand and a distinctly bored expression in his one visible eye. Sasuke was not happy to see him.

"What the Hell is going on?" he gritted out between clenched teeth. "I haven't seen you at all since I entered the village!"

"I'm just here to tell you that trying to sneak out is a stupid idea," Kakashi told him, shrugging. "You're under house arrest, remember. Or rather, compound arrest. I'm sure Naruto wouldn't appreciate having all his hard work undone simply because you are incapable of sitting in one place and letting someone else handle the situation you are not equipped to handle." Sasuke glared murderously at the jounin. Kakashi was unmoved.

"You look much better than when you first got back," the grey-haired man stated, smiling with his eye. "The Council was betting you'd not be alive next year to worry about. Good to know that none of my former students live up to their low expectations." He pushed off the door, stretched, then formed the hand seal to activate the teleportation jutsu. "Stick around until Sakura shows up," he told the incredulous younger man, before disappearing in a puff of smoke. Sasuke was left in his suddenly quiet house with nothing but the dubious company of an ANBU. Coming to a decision, he strode towards the door.

"I'm allowed outside the house so long as I don't leave the compound. Ask the Hokage if you need verification," he told his new guard as he passed. He didn't wait for any protests, but continued to walk with purpose out of the house and toward the main gate of the Uchiha complex. Sakura had consistently shown up at about four thirty with breakfast since that first day he'd been out of prison. She'd be here soon, and when she showed up Sasuke would see if Kakashi's hint she might tell him something had any merit. If it didn't… his eyes narrowed. If it didn't, well, Sasuke would make sure everyone remembered he was the missing-nin that had killed a Sannin with his own jutsu at fifteen.

ooo

Sakura was late.

Sasuke reached one end of the gate into the complex for the 317th time, turned on his heel and began pacing (well, limping, his knee was still injured) back to the other end. It was now about 7:30, which meant Sakura was still not here three hours after she usually came. He reached the edge of the other side and turned around to walk back. Sakura had never been late before. Late meant there was something rather horribly wrong that needed her expertise, and that something was likely Naruto. The young man scowled inwardly. There better be a _really_ good explanation coming.

He caught his guard's shift in weight out of the corner of his eye. The man had been standing in one place for about as long as Sasuke had been out here, probably rather uncomfortable about his charge's close proximity to the edge of his allowed area of freedom. Sasuke quite frankly didn't give a shit. He was still inside the complex (about two inches inside was still inside), and thus there was nothing the guard could do unless he proved to be a danger to himself or someone else, or was threatened by someone else in some way. He considered moving another inch towards the gate for amusement's sake.

He didn't get the chance, because right then Sakura came into view, her eyes tired and her lips pressed together, and carrying something that looked like it might be breakfast. Sasuke stopped pacing and Looked at her.

She didn't react the way he'd hoped she would. "Hello, Sasuke-kun. Sorry I'm late, there was an emergency at the hospital and I was called in right as I was leaving to bring you something to eat. I hope you don't mind that it's just some rice; I didn't really have time for anything more creative. Your knee looks a bit better. I'll do some more work on it back at your house." She smiled at him and walked past towards the house as though he met her at the gate every day. He stared at her retreating back, until she was almost out of sight around a corner, then shook himself into motion and followed. His guard did the same.

Sakura was waiting at the door when he finally caught up with her, still cheerfully acting as though there was nothing particularly different about today. He glared at her, but let her in, and she went straight to the kitchen, chattering about how she'd just warm up breakfast and he should go change into something. He blinked at the last part, just now remembering he was still in the clothes he'd slept in. Rolling his eyes, he went to shower and change.

He managed to re-enter the kitchen just as Sakura was setting food on the table. She smiled at him, then sighed when she saw the expression on his face. "Alright, Sasuke-kun. You can stop looking at me like that now. I can't tell you anything," she declared as she sat down at the table and picked up a pair of chopsticks. Sasuke sat down as well and raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm a medic-nin," she snapped suddenly, clenching the chopsticks in a fist. Sasuke didn't let the sudden change in mood faze him. "We don't take the Hippocratic Oath, but we _are_ required to follow confidentiality rules. The only person I can tell when a patient explicitly asks me not to is the Hokage, and _that's_ only in a state of emergency. This _isn't_ an emergency, you aren't the Hokage, and Naruto isn't in any position to give me permission." She punctuated this with angrily taking a mouthful of rice.

"He also wasn't in a condition to ask you _not_ to tell anyone," Sasuke pointed out logically as soon as the unfortunate rice had been swallowed. Sakura bit her lip and looked at her bowl. Sasuke felt like he'd been hit with a brick. "Unless this has been going on for a while?" Sakura picked a little at her rice, not looking at Sasuke. Then she put her chopsticks down and met his eyes determinedly.

"Look, I can't give you any details, but I _can_ tell you not to worry too much. He's not so bad that he won't wake up."

Sasuke blinked. He wasn't worried. "I'm not worried," he said aloud to her. She looked at him skeptically.

"…Alright, then don't 'not worry'," she said finally, shaking her head.

"I'm just annoyed nobody will tell me why the guard who was supposed to be watching for threats _to_ me as well as _from_ me passed out in the middle of the night," Sasuke clarified.

"Fine, Sasuke, you're not worried." Sakura gave him a smile that bordered on patronizing. Sasuke looked back at his food and took a bite. Sakura sighed again, then got up and moved over to the side of his chair.

"Let me see your knee," she ordered. "I'll tell you as much as I know while I work on it if you'll stop trying to burn a hole through things with your eyes," she said wearily. Sasuke looked down at her. Sakura had her head bowed and was rubbing her temples as though she had a headache.

"Hn. Whatever," he responded nonchalantly, taking a bite of rice and offering her his knee while trying not to feel slightly guilty about pushing this when she was so obviously stressed and upset. She'd known he'd want information when she showed up, after all.

Sakura gave him a Look of her own, but bent over the injury and continued anyway. "His chakra was reacting to a lung injury he obtained during the two of your little impromptu sparring match. Apparently, you broke one of his ribs and it punctured a lung. The excess of chakra it took to heal this so it wouldn't impair his movements, combined with the inevitable lack of oxygen associated with a lung injury, eventually caused him to lose consciousness. His condition should improve when his lung completely heals and his chakra levels return to normal." She stood up then, having finished the healing for the day, and picked up her dishes to carry them to the sink. "And on that happy note, I need to get back to work. I'll be by later with something else for you to eat, but it probably won't be at lunchtime. I'm not sure I'll make it to dinner at all, so don't wait for me if I'm not here by eight, alright?" Sasuke, who was busy analyzing the information he was just given and only half paying attention as a result, shrugged. His former teammate sighed again, and slowly put a hand on his shoulder. He jumped at the contact and tried to shrug the hand off, but only succeeded in earning a sad little smile.

"Really, Sasuke, don't worry too much. This is as under control as it can be." She squeezed his shoulder, then turned on her heel and left before Sasuke could get past the 'not' of 'I'm not worried.' Sasuke frowned and turned back to the bowl of rice, staring at it as though it may hold answers he was obviously not going to be given. He was, he decided, getting _very_ tired of unanswered questions.

ooo

Sasuke didn't sleep well that night, or the night after that. It wasn't because he was worried, because he _wasn't_ despite what Sakura seemed to think, but it may have been because Naruto wasn't there to guard him. Sasuke wasn't so far gone that he couldn't admit to something when it slammed him repeatedly in the head, and suddenly going from the type of sleep one got when one felt safe to the kind of sleep one got when alone behind enemy territory was pretty convincing evidence.

He wouldn't have been surprised if Sakura hadn't noticed, since she looked like she was getting even less sleep than he was (she worked on his knee the next day and informed him that if he was careful with it for another day, it would be little more than tender in the morning), so he was rather surprised when the Hokage herself showed up at his door at two in the afternoon on the third day to pay a visit. The blond woman took one look at the missing-nin, rolled her eyes, and said "Fine, you can go see him. Only during visiting hours, though, and you have to go straight there and back. It probably goes without saying, but if you don't follow the rules, you'll be back in this house faster than even your pretty eyes can follow." Sasuke looked at her, unimpressed, and she glared back, before shaking her head and turning to leave.

"Your guards will be here in a few minutes. You are to stay with them and follow their orders. You're lucky Sakura and the brat like you so much, or I wouldn't be bothering with this at all." Sasuke watched her walk from the compound, and then went back into the house to change into something appropriate for walking about in public. The Hokage may not have cared that he'd just woken up (he'd almost slept last night. He was rather proud of himself, actually), but he was fairly sure he didn't want to know everyone else's reaction to him walking around in pajamas.

Kakashi and three ANBU had let themselves into Sasuke's kitchen by the time he'd changed. Sasuke resigned himself to a lack of privacy for the rest of the day. "They chose _you_ to be my guard?" he asked his old sensei caustically.

"Nope, I volunteered. They chose _them_ to be your guard," Kakashi said, nodding at the stoic masked figures behind him. Said masked figures didn't seem particularly annoyed about being talked about while they were still standing in the room. A very Naruto-esque voice in the back of Sasuke's head snickered and wondered what one would have to say to get a reaction. It then went very quiet when Sasuke remembered why they were here at all.

Kakashi, with his strange ability to always know exactly what Sasuke was thinking, nodded towards the door. "We'll follow you from the shadows." Sasuke resisted the incredible urge to mention that in a ninja village, following anyone from the shadows was both pretty useless and needlessly dramatic, instead choosing to put on his sandals and walk out the door.

For all the over-dramatization (seriously, Kakashi needed to lay off the _Icha Icha_), the walk over was fairly uneventful. Sasuke was slightly disappointed. A well-meaning attempt on his life would have spiced things up a bit. As it was, the most exciting event was his vague surprise that he remembered exactly where the hospital was after five years of absence. That probably said something about how much time he'd spent there.

Even getting the room number was surprisingly easy. Sasuke didn't think they'd hand over such information to a traitor of the village quite so easily, but the receptionist didn't even seem surprised he was there. The Hokage, apparently, moved rather fast once she decided to do something. Sasuke wasn't quite sure how this fit into his view of her, but decided to put it aside for later musing. He had a much more important self-appointed mission than figuring out the Sannin Tsunade at the moment.

The corridors, like all hospital corridors, were long and white. If they had voices, they would sound somehow both wispy and harsh from all the sickness and antiseptic they'd seen since their creation. Sasuke practically marched down them, looking straight ahead and ignoring the whispers of memory that tugged at the corners of his thoughts. _Waking up waiting for word of the family members not in the compound staring at the ceiling after failing to kill Itachi again challenging Naruto to a fight_… He reached Naruto's room and walked in, back straight and proud against his own reminiscences. He wasn't ashamed of his decisions, despite the fact that things didn't work out the way he'd wanted them to, and no damn hospital corridors would convince him otherwise.

The sight that greeted him upon entrance brought him up short.

Naruto was, as expected, still unconscious. He had some type of breathing contraption over his nose and an IV tube in his arm. He was motionless, which was probably the best indication there was something wrong. Sabuku no Gaara, Godaime Kazekage, was sitting in a chair at the foot of the bed, head bowed over some paperwork.

Sasuke vaguely remembered Naruto mentioning he'd have a different guard for a few days because a friend was coming into town. The blond shinobi had failed to mention who that friend was. The Uchiha gritted his teeth and went to sit down in a chair by the door.

"That is Kakashi-san's seat," the red haired Kazekage said without even bothering to look up at who he was addressing. Sasuke stopped and turned his head sharply to face Gaara, a retort on the tip of his tongue. Fortunately, he hadn't so much as opened his mouth before Kakashi stuck his head around the door frame.

"I'm on duty today, Kazekage-sama," he said cheerfully, visible eye closing in a smile. "Sasuke can take my seat if he wants it."

"Hn," Gaara responded, lips thinning. Kakashi nodded a farewell and exited again. Sasuke, pleased to discover that Gaara was about as happy with Sasuke's presence as Sasuke was with his, pointedly sat down in the seat he had chosen and equally as pointedly leaned his head against the wall, eyeing the ceiling nonchalantly. He, after all, had every right to be here, as he was Naruto's former teammate and current responsibility. Gaara was the leader of another Hidden Village and as such should be out doing diplomatic activities instead of hanging out in the hospital room of someone he had once tried to kill.

Needless to say, the silence that descended for the next few hours was distinctly uncomfortable.

It was Sakura who eventually broke it. The pink-haired kunoichi breezed in at about 6:00, balancing three hospital meals and a full IV and smiling cheerfully. Her smile widened when she saw Sasuke sitting in the seat that was apparently usually filled by Kakashi. "Oh, so you _did_ get permission, then! I'm glad," she told him, beaming. She handed him one of the meal trays. "Here. I brought an extra one just in case someone else was here besides Gaara and me." She turned to the Kazekage in question, who was looking up at her (would miracles never cease) with an expression that was blank, mildly interested or slightly annoyed at the disturbance her entrance had caused. Sasuke would have bet money on the latter.

"At a good stopping point?" Sakura asked, her voice implying the answer better be yes. Gaara continued to look at her for a few minutes before shrugging and setting the stack of papers on a low footstool next to him. Sakura smiled at him and handed him a tray, before setting the last one down on a seat at Naruto's bedside and moving to change the IV. The smile dropped almost immediately once she let her eyes rest on the blond man in the bed. "He's still not awake, then."

"The estimated timeframe was four days," Gaara responded.

"Yes, but I'd hoped maybe…" she trailed off and sighed before picking up the tray and sitting in the chair, replacing the food in her lap. Sasuke looked at his own hospital food, ignoring the uncomfortable feeling of an outsider witnessing an oft-repeated conversation between others. The food looked either plastic or sentient. He poked some with a chopstick, and when it didn't attack him, decided it was plastic and took a bite.

Yep. Plastic.

The Kazekage was eating the food mechanically, as though taste and texture didn't register at all, his eyes back on one of the papers he was holding in the hand not moving food from tray to mouth at even intervals. Sasuke resisted the urge to ask why he was here if he was going to do nothing but sit and work anyway.

Sakura finally broke the silence again. "Did Iruka-sensei come by yet today?" Gaara looked up from his papers.

"Earlier. Around 7:00. He could only stay until class started, though. He's apparently saving the last bit of his leave for keeping Naruto sane and in bed when he wakes." Sakura blinked, then laughed both at the words and the flat tone in which they were delivered. Gaara gave a sarcastic little smirk that may have been a smile in another life. Sasuke chose to take a bite of his plastic instead of joining the conversation.

The silence after that was much more comfortable.

ooo

Sasuke had to leave when visiting hours were over at 8:00 PM. Sakura, who came in to inform him of this, assured him he could come back when they started again the next day. So Sasuke left without complaint.

Gaara, of course, wasn't asked to leave. Either kazekages were now considered family or the hospital staff didn't want to cause a diplomatic incident. Sasuke felt his presence at all was inappropriate, and thus did not form an opinion.

He quite predictably couldn't sleep that night, though he did a little better than he had the previous two. He managed about two hours of intermittent sleep before giving up and trying to find something to keep himself occupied. Thus, when his guards showed up at 7:30 the next morning (sans Kakashi, who was presumably late), Sasuke was sitting up in the middle of his bed and in the middle of his 412th paper crane. True to form, the ANBU didn't comment, but when Sasuke came back from the shower in clean clothing, many of the paper birds appeared to have been opened and carefully refolded. Sasuke _didn't_ roll his eyes at the obvious show of distrust, but he wanted to.

Kakashi showed up an hour after Sasuke was due at the hospital, and then spent a while giving Sasuke that "you amuse me" look that had always made the young man want to explain his actions in such a way that they would seem less childish. Thus, when they finally left the house it was already 9:30 and Sasuke was in a considerably bad mood.

Unlike the day before, Kakashi didn't fade into the background and leave Sasuke the illusion of being by himself. He walked beside the younger nin, nose in his book, somehow completely ignoring the death glares Sasuke was sending his way. The Uchiha wondered if he was losing his touch.

Halfway to the hospital, Kakashi spoke. "Have you ever heard the legend about the 1000 paper cranes?"

Sasuke stopped walking and turned to look at him incredulously. "The what?"

Kakashi shrugged. "Legend says if you fold 1000 paper cranes for someone who is sick, they'll get better."

Sasuke blinked. "That's completely illogical," he told his former teacher. "If you could cure anyone by folding cranes, nobody would ever die of long term illness."

The masked man nodded, looking away from Sasuke and at the hospital building that had just come into view. "I'm glad you don't put any stock in it. If a person cares about someone that sick enough to make a thousand cranes for them, he should probably be spending that time with the sick loved one instead of folding paper." Sasuke opened his mouth to ask what Kakashi meant by that, but they were at the door to the hospital now and Kakashi was opening the door and entering before Sasuke, not bothering to hold it open for the younger man behind him. Sasuke frowned and added yet another addition to his mental list of indications that Naruto had some long-term illness about which he'd told everyone but Sasuke.

ooo

Gaara wasn't in the hospital room when Sasuke entered. Sasuke felt somehow triumphant. The triumph was dampened somewhat by the presence of Umino Iruka, who was sitting in the chair next to the still-unconscious Naruto.

"Sasuke," the academy sensei greeted the new arrival, rising and smiling pleasantly (Sasuke privately decided that Iruka could _still_ forgive anyone anything, and was strangely comforted to know that there was at least one person in the village who was likely to think of him in exactly the same way for the rest of his life). "I'd heard that you'd been given permission to visit." He looked over at the chair Sasuke was eying. "Oh, the Kazekage had something to take care of this morning, so he probably won't be in until about two in the afternoon. I left my class with a substitute so someone would be here if Naruto wakes up today like he's supposed to. Unless you'll be here…?"

Sasuke shrugged and took the seat he'd (grudgingly) vacated last night. Iruka beamed. "Oh, good. I can go and relieve Anko-san of the class then. Or, rather, relieve the class of Anko," Iruka corrected, rubbing the back of his head in a familiar show of embarrassment. "It was good to see you Sasuke." And with that, he left the room. Sasuke blinked, realizing he hadn't actually said a word during the whole exchange and inadvertently agreed to take up Iruka's spot as sentinel. He wondered if Iruka had learned that trick from dealing with the disgruntled parents of disruptive students. A quick look out the window revealed that it was only 11. He sighed and prepared himself for a long and boring watch.

ooo

Two hours later, Sasuke was still alone in the room with a comatose blond shinobi and nothing to do. He was also getting a cramp from sitting in the uncomfortable chair for so long and was beginning to feel rather hungry. Overall, the situation did not help his already poor mood.

He sighed, then did it again when he noticed the sound covered up the debilitating quiet in the room. After all, Naruto was present, and any place Naruto was should somehow be unbearably loud and distracting. He glared at the young man in question as though it was somehow his fault he was not louder while unconscious.

"You can't even be an annoying dead last right," Sasuke complained at his still companion. "It was the one thing you were good at when we were on the same team. You seem to have only become more incompetent while I was gone. I hadn't thought it was possible." Naruto didn't respond. Sasuke glared harder, as though the silence of his former teammate was an insult.

"What kind of guard passes out for no discernable reason during his shift, anyway?" he snapped. "Did you really learn _absolutely nothing_ in the academy? You had a job to do, you moron, and going from perfectly fine to being _in shock_ is not actually doing it. There wasn't even any warning. I just went to sleep, and when I woke up you'd passed out. You should have gotten another guard and gone the fuck home if you were sick. What if someone in the village with a grudge against missing-nins had attacked while I was asleep? After all the time and energy you put into tracking me down when I didn't want to be found and you had goals of your own, I'd think you'd be a little more serious about keeping me alive.

"You're damn lucky I don't actually care if I'm in Konoha or not," he continued, turning away and looking at the ceiling. "If I'd wanted to leave right then, there'd have been nobody to stop me. _Then_ what would you have done? Followed me around like a lost puppy for another five years until I took pity on you again? Che, dead last." Naruto still didn't answer.

"You're inconveniencing everyone," Sasuke continued, still refusing to look over at the still form of one of the few people he might one day let be his friend again. "You say you care about everyone, and then you pull shit like this. I've got four guards watching me just to be here, and one of them's _Kakashi_. Plus, it's not like being in your company right now is particularly intellectually stimulating. Not that it ever is, but right now you aren't even annoying. I'm sitting in this damn chair, which I'm convinced came from an interrogation room, by the way, and talking to someone who's fucking _comatose_, for crying out loud!"

"Shut up, bastard," Naruto muttered from his place in the bed.

Sasuke didn't even remember standing up. One moment he was sitting across the room about ready to complain about the progressing cramp in his left leg, and the next he was standing over Naruto's hospital bed. "What was that, dead last?" he said, wondering if he was finally tired enough to begin hearing things.

Naruto opened his eyes just enough to glare. "I said, shut up. I have a headache and your bitching's just making it worse."

ooo

Sasuke would have said more, but just then a medic-nin ran in (likely summoned by a jutsu set to go off when Naruto woke) and Sasuke had to get out of the way or else be run over by a blur of white. Then Sakura came in and gave Naruto a full checkup over loud protests from her patient, all the while lecturing over him about how he _knew_ he was supposed to be careful and what in the world was he thinking to not tell her he'd gotten so injured, she could have done some of the healing herself and he wouldn't have ended up in such a state. Sasuke glared at the back of her head and wondered what she meant by "herself". Then Gaara came back and Kakashi popped his head in for a few moments to see for himself how Naruto was doing, and all of this effectively tired out the young man who'd been dead to the world for four days enough that he fell asleep again. When all was said and done, Sasuke had to wait another four hours to grill Naruto for answers to some of his questions (damned if he was going to ask the dead last what the hell was going on in front of _Gaara_ of all people).

Finally, though, Gaara had to leave again, as he'd left his meeting with Tsunade rather abruptly, presumably with her blessings, or Sasuke had little doubt the bitch would have followed him, when the news had reached the Hokage's office that Naruto was awake, and Naruto, now awake again, had absolutely nothing with which to ward off the coming conversation.

Sasuke decided to begin rather simply. "So why, exactly, did you pass out in my hallway?"

Naruto scowled. "It's none of your business why I passed out in your hallway." Sasuke blinked, slightly stung for reasons he couldn't understand.

"I think it is my business," he insisted, standing up from the chair he'd returned to when the ruckus had started and walking back to the bed so he could loom over Naruto. "You're _my_ guard. You're there to keep people from attacking me while I'm not allowed to defend myself under your stupid parole as much as you're there to make sure I keep to parole. If I'm being forced to place my fucking _life_ in your hands, I think I have at least just as much right to know what the hell is going on as an academy sensei, a handful of various ANBU, a perverted jounin and the leader of another ninja village." Naruto's eyes snapped to his, alarmed.

"What the hell do you mean, 'a handful of various ANBU'? The ANBU don't know anything about it!"

"They reacted pretty quickly when I activated sharingan," Sasuke snapped.

"They probably had orders from the Hokage, who _does _know because she's the leader of Konoha and needs to know if the people under her have any limitations," Naruto snapped back, his voice rising slightly.

"I'm glad I have some company in my ignorance," Sasuke responded sarcastically.

"What ever happened to 'I hate the world and don't give a shit about anything in it'?" Naruto retorted angrily.

"What ever happened to 'open your eyes and see all the people who care about you,'?" Sasuke countered. "You honestly think I'm going to rely on someone whose weaknesses I don't _know_? I'm not an _idiot_, Naruto!" Naruto went very quiet at that. Finally he sighed and threw the arm without the IV over his eyes, resigned.

"Truth is, I don't really understand everything about it myself," he admitted wryly. "I could give you the dumbed-down version, but you'd get more information if you asked Sakura. She's the medic-nin currently in my care." He moved his arm to glare half-heartedly at Sasuke. "You're a bastard, you know. That was fucking low." Sasuke rolled his eyes and opened his mouth to respond, but was interrupted when Naruto yawned.

"Go to sleep, idiot," he ordered the other young man, walking back to his seat by the door as he did so.

"Don'…don' tell me whatta do, bast'rd," Naruto muttered even as his eyes closed. He was out like a light by the time the last syllable left his lips. Sasuke settled in to wait the three hours until Sakura came to chase him out. After all, he now had permission to pry the information out of her and four witnesses currently stationed in places outside the hospital room with easy access to prove it.

ooo

Sakura came in at eight in the evening to tell Sasuke visiting hours were over. He started talking before she'd even opened her mouth.

"Naruto says to ask you about his illness." Sakura paused, looked at him measuringly for a moment, then sighed and looked away.

"Alright," she responded. "Go back to the complex. I'll meet you there in about fifteen minutes." Sasuke nodded and walked out the open door. "Sasuke," Sakura called suddenly, causing the young man in question to stop and turn to look at her. Sakura was biting her lip. "You…" she sighed. "Never mind. I'll be there in a few minutes." Then she turned back to her patient, who had been feigning sleep for the past two minutes, and Sasuke left.

ooo

Early update this week, since you've all been so amazingly patient with me, and since I won't be near a computer this Sunday. Thanks to Three-Eyed Squirrels, Dragon77 and Boshoku who reviewed.

Boshoku: Yes, this would be where that illness is coming into play. –grin-

Dragon77: Sorry I took a bit to update. Hope the chapter's up to standards at least?

Three-Eyed Squirrels: Yay betaed! –hug-

Hope you all like the chapter. Reviews are always welcome, of course. I'm really looking forward to posting chapter 5 next weekend. It's my favorite so far. –evil grin-

Until next week!


	5. Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Sakura wasn't there in a few minutes. In fact, it was another two hours before the young woman finally showed up, bringing with her three scrolls, Naruto's patient chart (his medical record at Konoha hospital), an apology for her tardiness and an expression on her face both thoughtful and grave. Sasuke had made tea, but as he'd expected her about an hour and forty-five minutes ago it was now stone cold. Sakura slipped into the kitchen to fix another pot, dismissing the ANBU guard as she did so and therefore leaving Sasuke alone with her rather interesting reading material. He reached for the chart first and opened to the most recent set of notes.

Unfortunately for Sasuke, there is a universal truth about doctors: while taking notes, they are all completely incapable of both good penmanship and full sentences.

_pt shows ↑ C.L. in R. lung. CK ↓ to 35 read. C._

_imm. sys. act. 45_

_pt reports fat. post-5 min. sus. cause C. fat._

_rec. 4 days IH + 3 days OH rest_

_RTD ≈ 7 days (rec)_

"Find anything interesting?" Sakura asked, coming back into the living room with two mugs of tea and placing Sasuke's next to him on the low table by the couch. She took a seat in a chair across from him and sipped from her own mug. Sasuke shrugged.

"Something about his immune system not being at full strength, and the recommended time until he can return to duty," he responded, closing the chart and replacing it with his mug, from which he also took a sip. He eyed Sakura over the top.

The pink-haired medic-nin nodded. "I suppose that's as good a place to start as any. What do you know about the healing capabilities of tailed demons?"

Sasuke raised an eyebrow. "If Naruto's any indication, they heal rather quickly from most injuries." He was rather wondering where this was going, but refrained from asking. Sakura would get around to the important part in time.

"You're right," Sakura nodded, setting down her mug and opening one of the scrolls (rolled so that it opened about halfway through) and handing it to Sasuke. It was covered in extremely small print. "If you read that, you'll find that the Tails' immune systems and healing abilities are far above normal for what is considered normal for a human, mainly because when in their own bodies they are made entirely of solid chakra. They heal by pushing some of their useable chakra to the affected area and thus forcing the wound to close or the infection to leave their bodies. It's rather like performing a jutsu for them. Understand so far?" she asked. Sasuke nodded, half his mind on the scroll he was skimming as she spoke. Sakura continued.

"Humans are different because they're composed of muscle, bone, organs…" she made the universal hand gesture for 'et cetera'. "Their immune systems and healing abilities rely on, for example, white blood cells and platelets, as well as their own chakra which allows these reactions to take place. In Naruto's case, he heals extremely quickly because Kyuubi reacts to any threat to Naruto's health the way he would in his own body: by sending his chakra to the affected area and forcing the injury to heal or nullifying the intrusion."

Sasuke nodded at her, rolling up the scroll and placing it on the table, now turning his full attention back to the medic-nin who was once his teammate. "Is that why there was the immune system percentage in the chart? It's not as strong as it should be because Kyuubi usually heals Naruto before it can work?"

Sakura nodded. "That is why it's so low, yes. It's only part of the problem, though." Here she hesitated, bighting her lip. Sasuke wondered why she was trying to word her explanation so carefully. "You see… Humans don't heal the way Tails do because their bodies aren't made for it. Forcing chakra to close a wound isn't a big deal for a Tail since they _are_ chakra, and would only need to rest for a little while until the chakra they used regenerates. Humans…" she paused again, then ploughed forwards. "If a human heals the same way, it needs to take _muscle_ and _bone_ from somewhere else to heal the injured area, and the areas the necessary materials are taken from are damaged, or at the very least stretched more than is natural, to do so. When this happens in Naruto, Kyuubi's chakra then goes to the new affected area and heals _that_ in the same way, and the problem just escalates." She shrugged then. "Naruto is a reasonably healthy person overall, since he _is_ shinobi, so eventually Kyuubi can heal enough that there is no longer an obvious problem, and the chakra subsides for Naruto's body to, presumably, take care of the rest. Unfortunately, this leaves Naruto's body a little weaker than it was before." She reached for her tea and took a sip, before looking back at Sasuke. "Do you understand the problem now?"

"Naruto's body is slowly weakening due to the too-fast healing," Sasuke answered. Sakura nodded, smiling sadly.

"Right. And it only gets worse with every injury he receives. Eventually, his body is just going to run out of resources, and he's going to shut down, his body having eaten itself alive and his own chakra having burned him to death from the inside out." There was a heavy silence after this as Sasuke tried to process the idea that Naruto, stubborn, annoying, unstoppable Uzumaki Naruto, was…

"He's dying," Sasuke finally said aloud, looking Sakura straight in the eye for confirmation. Sakura looked away from him and nodded, her face marred with hopelessness and sorrow.

Sasuke nodded, almost to himself. "How do we cure it, then?" The kunoichi looked back at him, startled.

"We don't," she said, surprised. "Kyuubi controls the chakra, and there's no way to actually make him stop reacting to injuries in the way he is. Even if he stopped healing Naruto completely the way he's doing now it wouldn't be a permanent solution, since the seal itself is slowly integrating Kyuubi's chakra with Naruto's own, and Kyuubi's reaction will become increasingly Naruto's body's instinctive reaction to injury or illness. We can't even remove him, since that will kill Naruto faster than the chakra."

"We could try to repress Kyuubi's chakra," Sasuke pointed out logically. Sakura shook her head.

"We can't. Kyuubi would just add more chakra behind the ward closing him off, until he broke through and even more chakra goes to the damaged area."

"I'll do it," Sasuke offered. "I can repress Kyuubi using sharingan." Sakura stared at him. Sasuke looked calmly back. Finally, though, Sakura shook her head again.

"You'd have to hold Kyuubi back until Naruto's body healed on its own, which could take months. Or years, depending on the injury," she added wryly. "You don't have enough chakra to do that, and when you run out, Naruto will only be worse off than he was before."

Sasuke glared at her at that. "There has to be some way," he told her stubbornly.

Something in Sakura's eyes snapped, and she was on her feet almost faster than Sasuke could see (without sharingan, of course). "You think I haven't looked?" she shouted. "You think Tsunade-shishou hasn't looked? You think _Jiraiya-san_ hasn't looked? You think Kakashi-sensei and Iruka-sensei haven't? Hell, Sasuke, even _Gaara's_ looked. There's _nothing we can do_!" Sasuke waited until she had finished yelling this at him before responding.

"How long?" he asked.

Sakura deflated. "Ten years if he gives up the lifestyle of a shinobi and focuses on taking care of himself. Boosting his immune system, not training to exhaustion," she started. "We've given him about five if he stays a shinobi but takes better care of himself. He'd probably remain a chuunin for the rest of his life, but that's not so bad. A lot of ninja don't make it farther than that. If he doesn't…" she bit her lip, her eyes shining a little. "If he keeps pushing himself the way he does, he'll be dead by the time he's twenty."

"Three years, then," Sasuke calculated aloud, nodding. "That's fine." He picked up the scroll he'd been reading before and began rolling it back to the front.

"What do you mean, 'that's fine,'?" Sakura asked, her eyes narrowing.

"That gives me more than enough time," he told her, having reached the beginning of the scroll. He set it down on the table and bent over it.

"For what?" Sakura asked, interrupting him. He looked up at her and gave her a smirk.

"_You_ all may have looked," he told her, "but _I haven't_."

ooo

It hadn't occurred to Sasuke at first, but researching anything while not being allowed to leave the compound meant he would need to spend some time in his father's old study. Unfortunately, after five years of neglect it was suffering from severe cases of both dust and mildew. It took the young man the better part of the first day just to clean up enough that he could find the scrolls he was looking for and another day of very careful handling and perusal to determine that four of them deserved further examination. He relocated them to the table in the kitchen and spent the rest of the day and the better part of the night reading through the first one. The next day he sent a request to the Hokage to use sharingan for research purposes. The request was sustained.

It took him the whole next day to copy the scrolls and write down the pertinent information, but in the end he had to admit that none of them said anything that could be useful in finding a cure. This was, to say the least, mildly frustrating, but Sasuke didn't let that deter him from asking Sakura to request he be allowed to use the medical library attached to the hospital when she came at ten in the evening with dinner. She looked at him consideringly for a time, and then told him that she'd ask, but Tsunade wouldn't grant permission for a missing-nin under house arrest to use a library filled with Konoha's medical secrets and techniques. "But," she told him, a stubborn glint Sasuke couldn't remember from their days as teammates coming into her eye, "she'll probably let me bring you the scrolls you want to look at. Give me tomorrow morning to ask her."

At lunch the next day, Sakura appeared with a tome emblazoned with the peeling words "Library Catalog" and a triumphant set to her lips. Sasuke, who hadn't slept well the night before and had spent the time cleaning out his father's library, was rather grateful for the distraction from killer dust-bunnies and mold he was pretty sure had become sentient. He had a list of the scrolls he wanted compiled for her by 8 PM when she reappeared bearing casserole.

She looked over his requests while they ate dinner, and Sasuke couldn't help but be a little worried when she began frowning halfway down the list and continued through the rest of it. Finally, she reached for a pen and started marking certain entries with a star in the margin.

"These are the texts I already have notes on," she told him, handing the paper back. "There isn't anything in them you can use."

"You might have missed something," Sasuke responded logically, handing the paper back after a quick scan of what she'd indicated.

"I _didn't_," she insisted, shaking her head. "Even if I did, one of the five other people researching with me would have caught it. Sasuke, what you're looking for… there's no precedent for it. You aren't going to find this subject matter in any of the medical texts or scrolls currently written."

"I'm going to look _anyway_," Sasuke snapped, glaring at her. She sighed and shook her head.

"Listen," she started reasonably. "I'll get you the scrolls or texts we haven't looked through tomorrow and the notes on the others by lunch the next day. If you find anything you want to follow up on in them, I can get you the text, all right?" Sasuke glared harder, but acquiesced. He probably wasn't going to get a better offer than that, after all.

Sakura was as good as her word. She had all thirty scrolls he'd asked for by lunch the next day, and Sasuke spent the rest of the day and through the night scanning them with sharingan eyes, jotting down anything that he found that might have something to do with the topic at hand. He stopped briefly at lunch on the fifth day when Sakura came with a year's worth of notes from six people, mainly because she insisted he needed to eat something, but then he delved right back into the research and didn't resurface until midnight when he finished scanning the twentieth scroll and stopped to rest his eyes and turn on a lamp. He'd not noticed it getting dark.

He didn't sleep that night, either. He finished the materials that hadn't been looked at yet in another four hours and moved on to the notes, having given up on taking notes himself somewhere around scroll number fifteen. His eyes allowed him to copy and store what he saw after only a glance. He didn't need the paper copy, and if it became absolutely necessary he could always write what he read down from memory later.

He still hadn't found anything.

The next time Sasuke was conscious of the time was about 10 in the morning when Sakura shook him awake. She looked worried. "You're eyes are bloodshot," she informed him by way of greeting. He snorted and raised an eyebrow at her, hoping his expression said 'do you have anything of import to add?' and not 'I haven't had a full night's sleep in about ten days.' She scowled at him.

"Naruto knows what you're doing," she informed him randomly. "He told me to tell you to stop. I agree with him."

"No," Sasuke said succinctly, and turned back to the notes.

Unsurprisingly, Sasuke didn't sleep that night either, though he did stop working when Sakura came again at dinner time for just long enough to eat, shower, and change his clothes. He was through Kakashi's notes and halfway into Sakura's, with Jiraiya, Tsunade, Iruka and Gaara left to read. He hadn't found anything yet. He was beginning to suspect this was because there was nothing to find.

He didn't notice when the sun rose, and he didn't notice when Sakura walked into the room around noon on the seventh day. "Sasuke," she called, and he turned to her, the last page of Iruka's notes clutched in his hand. He hadn't slept well for nearly eleven days, some days not at all. His chakra levels were exhausted from keeping sharingan active for nearly a week straight. He had memorized more about demons, human immune systems and chakra uses than he'd thought even existed.

He was exhausted.

He'd found nothing.

There was no precedent, nowhere for him to even _begin_ looking.

There was nothing he could do.

"Naruto's going to die," he told her, finally letting the knowledge sink into conscious mind. It seemed nearly impossible, but it was true. Naruto, who'd lived after Sasuke had punched him through the shoulder and chest with chidori at the age of twelve, was going to die because he healed too fast.

"Yes," Sakura agreed. Her face held more hopelessness than Sasuke had ever seen on it. He nodded back, and turned around to start putting away the library texts and scrolls and reorder the notes, which had managed to spread and take over the kitchen table over the course of the week.

He didn't realize he was crying until the ink on the page in front of him smeared from the tears.

ooo

Naruto was back on guard duty the next day. Sasuke, who was suffering from what Sakura told him was extreme fatigue, didn't wake up when he entered. When he did wake up, he didn't leave his room. Miracle of miracles, Naruto didn't come in to try to make him.

He wasn't really sure why he didn't want to see the blond shinobi. Well, that wasn't true. He did know. He didn't want to see Naruto because of the knot of emotions that had taken root somewhere in the vicinity of his stomach, at least not until he'd figured out what they all _were_.

There was anger, of course. Oh, was there anger. Anger at Sakura for not telling him _as soon as he got back_, anger at the Hokage for not being able to cure the problem, anger at the Fourth for putting Kyuubi into Naruto to begin with. Anger at Naruto for making Sasuke believe he might be able to lean on someone for _once in his life_ and then have the audacity to be _dying_. Anger at himself for not being able to save him. Anger at _wanting_ to save him.

He was… well, depressed, he supposed was the best term. He felt as though there was a numbing veil over everything, one that sapped all of his energy and made it too much of a hassle to even get out of bed. He'd been struggling with this since he got back, but for a time it looked like it might be lifting. It was apparently back with a vengeance. Figured…

He was a bit amused, too, in a very dark way. This was just so _typical_ of his life to date. Of _course_ he finds out the person he's beginning to let in is going to die as soon as he begins to let them in. Obviously. Why hadn't he expected it?

Because Naruto was immortal, that's why. Naruto had taken two chidoris _through_ him and still lived. Naruto had fought a _demon_ to a standstill when he was twelve. Naruto was never hurt, never sick, never anything but very much _alive_ and _annoying_. He wasn't _ever_ supposed to die. He was just supposed to always be there, a bright orange presence that Sasuke knew would jump to help if ever he indicated it would be acceptable. He was supposed to be forever that twelve-year-old who defeated the pride of the Hyuuga clan and fell for Kakashi's _stupid_ tricks and fought Sasuke on rooftops and called him his best friend even as Sasuke was trying to _kill _him. He wasn't supposed to be sick. He wasn't supposed to be dying. He was supposed to be _Naruto_.

And maybe that was the real reason Sasuke couldn't bring himself to leave the sanctuary of his bedroom. Because he was afraid that if he left and looked at the young man standing guard outside the door, he wouldn't see that twelve-year-old who was indestructible and incorrigible and disgustingly optimistic, with big dreams and the determination to make them realities. He'd see a seventeen-year-old _man_ who was sick and dying and knew it.

Sasuke didn't think he could take that. He wasn't sure he ever would be.

He spent the week in his room, and refused to look at his guard on the few occasions he left to use the bathroom or get something to eat from the kitchen. Naruto didn't try to make him.

ooo

Of course, even the shock of discovering that the man who used to be your best friend is dying wears off eventually, and when it did Sasuke wandered out of his room as though he hadn't just spent a week – _hiding_ – in it. Naruto, who had been practicing a form in the narrow hallway promptly dropped the practice katana and stared at him openly. Sasuke just scowled at him and walked outside, wondering what type of idiot finds out that being a ninja is killing him and then proceeds to train in other people's hallways.

Naruto followed about three minutes later, a rather large grin on his face, and started the form over again. Sasuke stretched out in the sun, closed his eyes, and pretended he wasn't listening for signs of exhaustion from the young man a few feet from him.

An hour passed, then two, and Naruto didn't take a break. _The idiot_, Sasuke thought, _what does he think he's doing? He's going to kill himself _faster

"Shouldn't you stop for a bit?" he finally asked. According to the position of the sun, it was about 11:30, which meant Naruto had been training outside for almost five hours. In direct sunlight.

"Why?" Naruto responded, splitting his concentration between the complicated move in the form he was executing and the conversation with Sasuke. "Sakura will probably be here in another half hour to drag me inside anyway. Might as well get in as much time as I can." Sasuke opened his eyes and looked at the blond guard. Naruto was red-faced and sweating. Sasuke scowled.

"You're not supposed to be exhausting yourself, idiot," he growled, the nagging worry and anger growing in the back of his mind finally getting the better of him. Naruto stopped and looked at him, an eyebrow raised.

"I'm not exhausting myself," he insisted. "I'm training. If I don't, I'll lose my edge, and when Baa-chan finally clears your sorry ass I won't be in shape to take any missions."

"Maybe that's better," Sasuke murmured, pulling a mask of apathy over his face. Naruto blinked at him, sighed, and put the practice sword on the ground with the air of someone who'd just been told they were about to be sent to the gallows.

"Listen," he started, straightening up and stepping forward so that he was towering over Sasuke, who hadn't bothered to sit up. "I don't usually worry about the whole Kyuubi thing. It doesn't actually affect my day-to-day life as much as everyone seems to think it does."

"Except when you break a rib and spend four days unconscious in the hospital," Sasuke inserted caustically. Naruto's scowl deepened.

"And who's fault, exactly, was that?" he snapped. "Certainly not mine."

"If I'd known it would fucking _kill_ you, I wouldn't have fought you," Sasuke snapped back, finally sitting up in an unconscious attempt to put himself in a less vulnerable position.

"Bullshit," Naruto responded, crossing his arms over his chest. "You were _pissing_ mad when we fought. You wouldn't have cared if I was standing there in a full body cast and coughing up _blood_. And what do you mean, 'known it would kill me'? It _didn't _kill me."

"It probably means you're going to die _faster_," Sasuke spat, standing now and face inches from Naruto's own.

"Don't flatter yourself," Naruto retorted caustically. "I've had much worse than _that_."

"Because you fucking _throw yourself_ into situations where _anyone_ would get injured," Sasuke shouted.

"What would you have me do?" Naruto shouted back. "Lock myself in a room with no windows?"

"What _else_ are you good for?" Sasuke nearly screamed, and instantly regretted it. Naruto's eyes turned red.

"Oh, so I'm worthless, am I?" He asked quietly. "Just another troublemaker, an _orphan_, the _fucking Kyuubi vessel_. Not worth the ground other people _spit_ on, is _that it_?" His voice rose with every word until he was shouting again. "Well, I've got _news_ for you, Uchiha Sasuke, you and everyone else who thinks they can tell me how to live _my _life! I'm not going to curl up somewhere and hide just because people want me to! I'm not going to stop _living_ just because I'm going to _die_! I still have _things_ to do, you bastard, and I'd do a hell of a lot more than _die_ to see them done, which you of all people should understand, you fucking _hypocrite_!"

Sasuke almost took a step back, but stopped himself. He hadn't expected _that_. "What do you mean, 'things to do'?" he asked. Naruto made a sound of frustration and threw up his hands.

"I still need to become _Hokage_, you moron! Fuck knows I've _said_ it enough over the years that even if you were _ignoring_ me the _entire fucking time_ we were in the academy and on team seven you'd have heard me say so! What, you think I just _changed my mind_ after finding out I had even _less_ time than I thought to accomplish it?"

That was exactly what Sasuke had thought, though he wasn't fool enough to say it. He was staring at the young man in front of him, trying to figure out what kind of person is told they have three years to live and responds by shrugging and moving his timetable up. _The kind that has a dream to fulfill_, a little voice in the back of his mind whispered. _He's right. You _do_ understand. You know _exactly_ how he feels about this. You felt the same way yourself, five years ago in the Valley of the End when he told you to come home and you said no…_

The Naruto Sasuke had known was indestructible. He wasn't the smartest or the most talented, but he _was_ the most surprising, and took pride in it. He _never_ gave up, not when he'd failed the genin test, not when he'd thought his best friend had died, and certainly not when that friend had left to sell his soul for power. What had made Sasuke think that Naruto, stubborn, persistent, stamina-freak Uzumaki Naruto, who'd always won fights simply by _outlasting_ his opponent, would give up a dream because he had less time in which to achieve it? What had made him think Naruto, his – _teammate enemy comrade rival biggest pain in the ass brother _– alright, fine, he admitted it, his _friend_, would take even his own death lying down?

Naruto was dying, _knew _he was dying, and was treating that knowledge like just another opponent on his way to reaching his dream, like he'd treated everything life had thrown at him since Sasuke had met him.

The black-haired shinobi turned on his heel and began to walk around towards the front of the house, away from his seething best friend (who was, by the way, _still_ standing in the same place).

"Where are you _going_?" Naruto shouted after him, his voice tinged witha mixture of anger, hurt and betrayal.

"The training grounds," Sasuke called over his shoulder.

"_Fine! _See if I…wait. _What?_"

"_Che_, dead last," Sasuke said, halting and turning to face Naruto again. He gave the other young man his best smirk. "I know it's difficult for you, but _try_ to keep up. I'm going to the Uchiha training grounds."

Naruto looked _completely_ confused. It was the funniest thing Sasuke had seen in a long time. "_Why_?"

Sasuke rolled his eyes. "If we're going to take the jounin exam next year, I need to be a Konoha-nin again, which isn't going to happen if I don't get in _shape_. And I'm not going to get back into form if I don't have a training ground, which _logically_ means I need to clean out the training ground nobody has used for five years." He nodded to the wooden sword still sitting next to the slack-jawed moron.

"Take that with you. Your stance is _terrible_. I could knock you over with a feather if I wanted to." With that, he turned away and began walking again. He could practically _feel_ Naruto's grin.

"Oi, take that back, bastard! I could beat you any day of the week!"

"_Che_," Sasuke responded, and fought a grin himself as he listened to Naruto pick up the wooden practice sword and run to catch up with him.

Naruto was dying, but so were they all, in the end.

ooo

AN: Hey everyone! Hope you liked the chapter! Thanks to Three-Eyed Squirrels, Bloodluvingirl and Boshoku for the reviews!

Three-Eyed Squirrels: Thanks for the beta!

Bloodluvingirl: I'm glad you're enjoying! Hope this chapter is up to snuff…

Boshoku: Of course he's not worried. He's just doing recon. Really…

Just a fair warning: the chapter I'm working on is giving me hell at the moment, so chapter 6 might be a few weekends. Sorry!

Enjoy, and reviews are, as always, welcome!

Adi


	6. Chapter 6

Chapter 6

The Uchiha training grounds were at one time the best in Konoha. Four cleared rectangular areas ranging from flat surface to extremely uneven ground, each surrounded by a thick perimeter of trees so as to give the training ninja a semblance of privacy and equipped with targets ranging from the size of a bottle cap to one of a fully grown human being. Three wooden posts were anchored solidly in the ground at each site. Now, though, the clearings had been over-run by weeds, the targets faded, in some cases rotted, and the posts covered in various vine-like vegetation. The tree branches had also grown over the clearing, threatening to veil the entire area with leaves come autumn. While that might in some situations be good, as it would allow the shinobi using the area to practice on different ground coverings, it was much more likely to cause the ground to shift at an inconvenient moment and cause injury.

All in all, it took Naruto and Sasuke the rest of the day and part of the next to get all four training areas back into working order. It would have taken longer had it not been for Naruto and his judicious use of Kage Bunshin for _absolutely everything_ he ever encountered, of course. As it was, they were late to lunch that first day, and Sakura expressed her displeasure quite vocally while she forced Naruto onto a couch and gave him a full check-up (amidst much innuendo) before extracting a promise from the blond shinobi that they'd both eat the lunch she'd brought and running back to the hospital.

Then they started training and Sasuke realized just how out of shape one could become from sitting on one's ass for a month and doing nothing.

Naruto thought his frustration was hilarious, the idiot.

"I don't know why you're so angry about it," Naruto told him one day about a week after they'd begun training, hands linked behind his head in a familiar show of nonchalance. The two shinobi were walking back to Sasuke's, where they would hopefully meet Sakura for dinner. "So you can't take out an entire army without killing anyone at the moment. Not that many people can ever do that at _all_, you know?"

"Hn," Sasuke responded, lost in thoughts of lowered accuracy and speed. It was probably just as well he wasn't allowed to train using chakra yet. He didn't think he would have been able to control the bloodlust that came from using the curse seal at the moment.

Naruto rolled his eyes skyward. "You never change. It's always 'perfect or not at all' with you."

"What do you mean by that?" Sasuke asked absentmindedly, more as a reflex than anything else.

"I mean you always have to be the best, and if you aren't you flip and do stupid shit like run to the snake-bastard," Naruto clarified, his tone of voice clearly saying that he knew he was being ignored and was miffed about it.

Sasuke looked over, momentarily interrupted from reordering his training regimen to include accuracy drilling. "This coming from the ninja who finished last in the class and got tied to a post during his first training session," He sneered. "I may be a perfectionist, but you'll _always_ be dead last." This cutting remark delivered, he went back to the Topics of More Importance he had been thinking about before being rudely interrupted with idiocy.

"_Oi_," Naruto snapped, lowering his arms quickly and turning his head to glare. Then he gave that grin that never failed to get Sasuke's back up. "You're just jealous that I got stronger than you without the stick up my ass," he told his dark-haired friend cheerfully.

_That_ got Sasuke's full attention. The nerve… "I would still be able to wipe the floor with you if I hadn't trained for a _year_," he sneered, adding "dead last" as an afterthought. Naruto had a glimmer of challenge in his eyes.

"Care to put money on that, bastard? Because from what _I_ can remember, I've come out on top in our last _three_ fights."

"The first one didn't count," Sasuke insisted, glaring. "I'd just fought Itachi. I was exhausted. Plus, I pushed a rib through your _lung_ on the last one. Any normal person would have _died_ from that."

"Aren't you so glad I'm not a normal person?" Naruto snarked back, still grinning like a fox. "I noticed you didn't mention the bath. Gonna claim that one doesn't count, too, or are you just embarrassed?"

Sasuke was about to say damn right it didn't count, and if Naruto was _so strong_ why didn't he prove it right there in the road, but was stopped from doing so when he spotted Sakura leaning against his door, watching them approach with a strange look on her face, a combination of anger, worry, hurt, bitterness... It vanished, of course, when she saw him looking, to be replaced by a cheerful expression. "There you two are," she called, smiling and waving. "I was about to go and look for you. Naruto, Shishou wants to see you about something. She said you should go right when I got here, which was," her eyes flicked to her shadow, "fifteen minutes ago."

Naruto rolled his eyes. "What the hell does the old hag want _now_?" he complained. "If she's just going to try to get me to retire again, I'm not going."

"I think she plans to subtly convince you to give up the mission and do a few D-rank instead," Sakura informed him gravely, face a mask of seriousness.

"Ha! First she threatens me with suspension if I _don't_ take the mission, and now she wants me to give it up!"

"Well… she didn't think you'd be in danger of injury doing this," Sakura defended her teacher. The expression she'd worn briefly flickered through her eyes again, but was gone almost faster than it appeared. Sasuke considered commenting on it, but in the end decided there were more pressing matters to clear up first.

"The Hokage didn't think looking after a missing-nin who took down a Sannin with his own jutsu at 15 would be dangerous," the Uchiha reiterated, slightly amused.

"She thought you wouldn't beat the depression," Sakura responded wryly. "She's always been a terrible gambler."

"Well, I'm going to go tell her to make up her mind," Naruto informed them. He turned on his heel and walked towards the gate to the compound, waving at Sakura and Sasuke over his shoulder. "See you both later!"

Sakura waved back, and then turned to Sasuke as soon as the other shinobi was out of sight. The cheerful look seemed to have intensified until it could nearly be considered angry. "Let's go for a walk," she suggested through clenched teeth, abruptly turning on her heel and walking away from him, as though certain he'd follow. Resisting the urge to ask what the hell he'd done, the young man nodded and did so. An uncomfortable silence settled over the pair, mainly due to the fact that most of Sakura and Sasuke's conversations were her fussing or chattering at him and him making a few non-commital grunts and one or two responses. It was a well-established norm from back when they were both twelve and on team 7, and Sasuke had assumed from recent conversations with Sakura that the pattern had re-established itself.

This time, though, Sakura wasn't even attempting to make conversation. It was giving Sasuke the distinct impression that he was in deep shit.

Ten minutes after they'd reached the wall surrounding the Uchiha complex and had gotten on the path that traveled along the entirety of the inside, Sakura finally broke the silence.

"So you're training again. That's good," she said, tension coming though the cheerful tone. "It means you'll be in shape to take missions again when Tsunade-shishou lets you." Wondering where this was going, Sasuke nodded.

"Naruto plans to take the jounin exam next year," he told her. "I figured, since he's going to need another two teammates, I'll aim to be ready to take it by then, too." Sakura stopped walking. Sasuke did, too, and eyed her. He could feel his fight or flight instincts waking up, looking around, and deciding they didn't like what they saw. He held his ground, though, confident he could handle the situation if it suddenly went from bad to worse.

"Naruto's planning to try for jounin?" Sakura asked, her voice deceptively calm. "And you're _encouraging_ it?" It didn't sound so much like a question as an accusation.

Sasuke started to ask why the fuck he would care _what_ tests Naruto wanted or didn't want to take, but he didn't get past the first three words before survival instincts kicked in and he ducked. Sakura's fist sliced through the air over his head and hit the wall next to him, causing an explosion that left a hole large enough for three of Sasuke to fit through.

It had somehow slipped his mind that Sakura had been training under a Sannin, too. It wouldn't do so again.

"I can't _believe_ you!" Sakura shouted at him, shifting her weight and punching at Sasuke's head with the other fist. Sasuke dodged (still too slow, he'd need to work on that some more), and jumped back into a fighting stance, wishing with all his might he had a sword. The extra reach would be an advantage against a powerful taijutsu user, and if the hole in the wall at his back was any indication, Sakura was just that. "You _know_ he's dying! You _know_ forcing himself into the physical condition he'd need for the jounin exam will only kill him _faster_! I heard him talking about being Hokage again the other day! Are you really so _cruel_ that you'd allow him to believe he'll be able to reach that goal with only three years left to live?"

"Naruto will do whatever he wants with or without my approval," Sasuke snapped back, dodging another punch and ducking around so his back wasn't to the wall anymore. He was getting a little angry himself, now, and the adrenaline wasn't exactly helping him keep his temper. "And why shouldn't he reach for something he's wanted his entire life?" he asked. "He's not dead _yet_!"

"If he keeps going the way he is now, he _will be_ by the age of _twenty_!" the pink-haired kunoichi bit out. "This dream isn't worth his life! People don't keep the dreams they have when they're seven, anyway!"

"What do you know about following dreams?" Sasuke shouted, absolutely livid. "How _dare_ you decide for him what he can do with the time he has left! If he cares to do something enough to die for it, as his _friend_ you should be helping him, which _I_ am doing!"

"Since when are you his friend? You gave up the _right_ to call yourself that _five years ago_!" Silence fell again, this time thick with shock. Sasuke blinked, still in a fighting stance, stunned at what Sakura had just said. The young woman in question still had her fists raised to swing, staring at him open-mouthed as if _she_ couldn't believe she'd said it either.

Sasuke was the one to speak first. "I did," he agreed coldly. "Fortunately for Naruto, who you care about has absolutely _nothing to do_ with whether or not you deserve it." He straightened up and looked at her disdainfully. "I plan on helping him reach his goal no matter _how _much time in which he has to do it, and if you don't, you don't _deserve_ to be his friend either." He turned away from her (though not exposing his back, he didn't quite trust her enough after her recent stunt) and began walking back to the house, not bothering to wait for her to catch up. She did anyway a few steps later, and they made the rest of the journey to the house in silence.

ooo

"I can't _believe_ her," Naruto shouted the moment he stormed through the door. "She's just so...so…"

"Don't strain youself," Sasuke interjected blandly. Naruto glared at him, then ignored him in favor of continuing to rant.

"This is why I switched to you, Sakura-chan. At least you don't pretend to know what's best for me!" Sasuke saw Sakura flinch. Good. She _should_ feel guilty.

"She try to get you to change missions?" he asked instead.

"Yes," Naruto told him, glaring at nothing in particular as he plopped down in a chair across from Sasuke at the table and began shoving food into his mouth viciously. "I told her where to shove _that_ idea," he mumbled around a mouthful. "This is _my_ mission, whether or not it's what she thought it would be, and I'm going to fucking _finish it_." He swallowed and went back for more.

"Well, Sasuke-kun had better train really hard, then," Sakura piped up, her smile a little fake, but not something anyone would notice unless looking for it. "The mission won't be over until he's a full Konoha-nin again and the Council sees fit to remove the guards around him."

"Ah, that won't be too long," Naruto insisted, waving his chopsticks nonchalantly. "Those old men could never resist a chance to make themselves look better, and adding the last Uchiha back into their ranks will certainly do _that_."

"Nice to know you have so much faith in Konoha's governing body's greed," Sasuke murmured, smirking. Naruto snorted, then finished the rice on his plate and dropped his chopsticks before standing up and stretching. "Well, I'm done," he announced redundantly.

"We noticed," Sakura told him, a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. She stood up as well. "I should be going."

"I'll walk you to the door," Naruto offered, smiling at her. Sakura looked a little suspicious at that.

"Why?" she asked. Naruto blinked.

"It's polite?"

"Oh, well, as long as you don't try to make this a date in some way…" Sakura smiled at him. "I don't think Lee would like it." Naruto rubbed the back of his head in embarrassment and looked sheepish.

"Sakura-chan, I don't _do_ that any more!" Sakura laughed as they walked out into the hallway. Sasuke stood and followed, still not participating in the conversation. Sakura put on her sandals, then paused.

"Are you still planning to take the jounin exam next year?" she asked casually. Naruto nodded, his grin increasing.

"Yep. Sasuke-bastard said he'd be on my team, so I just need to find one more person."

"I'm thinking of taking it then, too," Sakura stated, eyes pointedly not drifting to Sasuke. "I'll be teammate number three if you want."

Naruto's eyes widened, then the grin became bigger than his head. "That'd be great! It'll be just like team 7 again!"

"Dead last," Sasuke murmured, unable to resist.

"Oi! Don't call me that, bastard," Naruto snapped, turning to glare at his dark-haired friend. Sakura smiled at him over Naruto's shoulder. Sasuke nodded back.

"I'll see you two later," Sakura said as she turned to leave. "I've got all the missions I need, but if we're going to do this, we need to relearn what it feels like to fight together." She took a step away from the threshold, paused, then turned again. Sasuke began to wonder if she was really leaving any time in the near future.

"Sasuke, did I tell you Tsunade-shishou removed the ban on chakra?" she asked over her shoulder.

"No, you failed to mention it," he told her blandly, forcing down the first three caustic remarks that sprang into his head. "Other things on your mind, I suppose," he added, since he couldn't let her forget that he wasn't particularly pleased with her.

She blinked, then blushed. "I suppose you're right," she muttered.

"Hn."

Naruto looked from one to the other, open curiosity displayed on his face for all to see. "Did something…" he started, then shrugged, visibly deciding not to worry about it. "Sakura, if you don't go you'll be late!"

"Damn it," she exclaimed, eyes widening as she glanced at her shadow. "You're right! See you both later!" she called, dashing off.

"Bye!" Naruto called back,waving. Sasuke watched her go, too, feeling just a little lighter. This wasn't quite team 7 as he remembered it, but really, that could only be a good thing…

ooo

AN: Wow, has it ever been a long time… Thank you all for being so patient with me, and thank you for the amazing reviews! (6 this time! –boggles–) And for Three-Eyed Squirrels and Jade Rozes, for sticking with me through the Conversation From Hell and betaing my poor attempts (Really, you'd think Sakura would want to punch Sasuke after all that, but nooooooooo…) After all that, you deserve something amazing. I'm sorry that the only thing I can offer is a bit of transition, and short at that! Chapter 7 will be longer, promise.

Kokoro: Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying!

Boshoku: Oh, yes, it has somehow become an imperative that they bicker. I'm sure Naruto, if he was aware of what Sasuke was saying, was rather frustrated that he couldn't say anything back.

Dancing Kitsune: Thank you! I hope this chapter is as anticipated.

Jade Rozes: Oh, no idea who you are at all… Haha. Thanks for reviewing, m'dear.

Three-Eyed Squirrels: Duly noted. Thanks, beta mine!

SWSNBN: Yay, tears–I mean… –hands you tissues– Don't cry! I'm so glad you think I'm doing alright on the characterization! It's what's most important to me. Feel free to say if you think I'm slipping, and I hope you continue to enjoy!

Right. Chapter seven only has a little left, so hopefully I'll be done by next Sunday. Hey, maybe I'll even get ahead a bit! –hope hope hope…–


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

The clock on the wall ticked away, merrily informing its aggravated observer that he had just spent twenty-eight minutes standing at attention in the office of the Hokage's aide. The observer's inner clock informed him that it had actually been twenty-seven minutes and fifty-four seconds. Twenty-seven minutes and fifty-four seconds that, quite frankly, could have been better spent in a disgustingly large number of ways. Sasuke scowled and shifted his stiff shoulders uncomfortably.

Shizune signed the scroll she was reviewing and moved it to what Sasuke assumed was the "completed" pile, before picking up a scroll from the "to be read" pile. Sasuke, who had watched her do this a total of 63 times now, wondered vaguely if he could switch some of them using kawarimi no jutsu without her noticing.

He had been told to be outside the Hokage's office at 0430 hours today, unarmed and accompanied by three ANBU guards who would be ensuring both his safety and his deference to protocol while in the Hokage Tower. Considering he'd spent the last three weeks flooding the Hokage's desk with messages requesting this meeting, being up and alert at 4:30 had seemed a fairly small price to pay to be allowed an audience. Now that Tsunade had apparently taken a leaf out of Kakashi's book, Sasuke was beginning to rethink his assessment of the situation.

"…back out to check the area again. I'll send word once I find something." The door to the Hokage's office opened, revealing a figure that Sasuke thought looked vaguely familiar. An older man, with long white hair and two red lines down his cheeks from underneath his eyes… The man blinked. "Uchiha Sasuke?" he greeted lazily, looking the younger man up and down with an expression that was half curious and half…Sasuke couldn't quite tell. He pasted a look of indifference on his face and didn't respond. "You'd be the appointment Tsunade said I was making her miss, then," the stranger continued.

"Stop chatting and let him in, Jiraiya!" came the Hokage's voice from within the room. The old man, now identified as the Sannin who Naruto had trained under while Sasuke was in Sound, scowled over his shoulder and muttered something under his breath, but stepped aside.

"I heard that!" the Hokage shouted, but Jiraiya had already nodded to Shizune and exited the office. Sasuke walked into the room in time to see Tsunade sigh and rub her temples. She looked up as the young man closed the door behind him.

"Alright, Uchiha, what's so damned urgent you needed to meet with me at this god-awful time of morning?" Sasuke bowed, figuring he might as well do this properly.

"Hokage-sama," he began. "It has been four months since I re-entered the village. I have been training for three of them, and feel I am now at a level of ability where I can comfortably take the chuunin exam." He looked her in the eye. "To enter, I need to be a shinobi of Konoha."

The Hokage's eyes narrowed. "Sakura warned me you'd be coming here to ask me to do this…" she murmured, as though more to herself than the young man in front of her. She leaned back in her chair and turned away from him, reaching behind her to a pile of scrolls as she did so.

"I'll tell you the truth, Uchiha," she said as she picked up a scroll, opened it, scanned the contents and discarded it for the next scroll on the pile. "In all of Konoha history, there has only been three missing-nin who returned to the village after being declared such, you included." She picked up the next scroll, scanned it, then discarded it. "The other two were executed as traitors of the village." Scroll, read, discard. "So, honestly, we're setting a new precedent with you… ah." She laid a scroll out on her desk and scanned the columns, her finger running down them until it came to rest in the middle of about the fourth. He narrowed his eyes, attempting to see what the scroll said without using sharingan (he was fairly sure the Hokage wouldn't appreciate that). She looked up at him, and he diverted his eyes to her face again.

"This is the last council meeting's record. We discussed what we were going to do with you," she told him, a small, slightly sardonic smile gracing her face as she spoke. "After many long and boring minutes of argument, thank you for that, by the way," she digressed. She continued speaking before he could defend himself. "After many long and boring minutes of argument between those who thought you should be locked up indefinitely and those who thought you should be given jounin rank immediately and sent on three S class missions simultaneously, we came to a conclusion. You will be given your Konoha-nin status back." She paused, and Sasuke waited for the 'but.' "But, in order to do so, we have to move your record from missing-nin to active nin, and to do _that_ we need to treat the last five years as a long-term mission. You will be required to give us a mission report for your time away from the village."

Sasuke kept his face carefully blank and waited for the punch line. _A mission report?_ he thought, surprised. _That's _it "What will this mission report need to include?" he asked carefully. Tsunade snorted, her expression becoming wry.

"Smart kid. The report will be used, first and foremost, as another source on information on Akatsuki. You tracked them for two years, after all, you have fairly up-to-date knowledge of their movements." Sasuke nodded slowly, and Tsunade continued. "Also, as part of your supposed 'mission' was training to a certain level of ability, the mission report will naturally have to include both the jutsus you learned and the methods you used to learn them." Tsunade folded her hands in front of her face. "After all, gaining the ability to defeat a ninja on Orochimaru's ability level in three years is fairly impressive, and if there is any way our instructors can recreate the process, we'd like to do so."

Sasuke stiffened, letting the hard impassive mask he'd perfected in Sound fall into place over the blank professionalism he'd been wearing before. He felt a certain amount of cold anger threaten to well to the surface, but suppressed and channeled it with the skill of long practice. "No shinobi is required to list his abilities, whether verbally or on paper, for his village," he stated, his voice distant and hard. "Doing so allows others to create counter-measures for those abilities."

Tsunade nodded, her mouth covered with her clasped hands. "That's true, but as you are attempting to regain your status as an active Konoha shinobi, and therefore likely don't plan to abandon the village again, other members of the village creating counter-measures for your fighting style and jutsus should not negatively affect you at all. We're sure you know nothing you feel you need to hide from your superiors in this village. Anyway, you are not being required to tell us anything. You could always turn down the offer. If you do, and you continue to behave, who knows? Maybe you'll be allowed out of your family's compound in a few years." Sasuke bit his tongue to stop himself from saying the first seven or eight things that came to mind. How _dare_...

Tsunade put her hands down on the desk, fully revealing her face. Her eyes and the set of her jaw were serious. "You have to realize, Uchiha, that after leaving, you will never be treated like a normal Konoha-nin. If you are allowed to advance, which is likely, there will be additional requirements placed on you in order to insure your advancement benefits the village as much as possible. The information you give us here has the potential to raise the productivity rates of our ninja significantly, and any information you have on our enemies will naturally be useful. Like I said, though, you can turn down the offer." Sasuke took a deep breath, and let it out slowly.

The fact was, he couldn't actually turn down the offer, no matter how much he wanted to. He was doing this, after all, so that he could watch Naruto's back during the jounin exam in six months, and to do that he needed to take and pass the chuunin exam in two. Which meant he needed to be an active Konoha genin. Damn it.

"I accept the terms," he told her, grateful in the knowledge that his face didn't betray just how cornered he felt in this situation. Tsunade smiled slowly, as though he'd passed some sort of test.

"Good. Have the report on my desk by this time next week. Dismissed." She turned back to her papers. Sasuke, not feeling particularly respectful at the moment, didn't bother to bow to her as he left the office.

ooo

Sasuke was very grateful Sakura had a mission for the next few weeks, or he'd have been forced to listen to her angry exclamations of how unfair to him this whole thing was. As it stood, he was having a hard enough time writing the report.

In battle, it was your jutsus that stood between life and death, your skill that determined whether or not you would walk away. As such, one's full arsenal was kept close to the chest, and telling anyone a part of it was an extreme show of respect and trust. Sasuke felt like he was being compromised. He was being asked to bear all his weaknesses and flaws on paper for other people to peruse, and hope that the hundreds of people who would have access to it over his lifetime and the lifetimes of anyone to whom he chose to pass his knowledge down would not attempt to exploit them.

Asking him to list his jutsus was a violation of an unspoken code amongst ninja, a desecration of his ability almost as disgusting as an actual rape. The council and Hokage were informing him that he was somehow less-than-human and therefore his life and safety were not as important to them as the lives and safety of the other ninja under their command. Even worse, they were planning on taking this information and attempting to use it to 'increase other Konoha-nins' productivity,' forcing Sasuke into the equivalent of the shinobi form of prostitution.

It was enough, Sasuke thought, livid, to justify going missing-nin. No hidden village would turn him away from their gates if he explained why he'd left his own.

He wouldn't have been able to make himself do it, though, even if he'd seriously considered it. He couldn't, because he couldn't watch out for his best friend if he wasn't here. He couldn't, because only someone completely heartless would throw away a sacrifice like the one Naruto made. And the five years Naruto spent trying to bring Sasuke home were a sacrifice, particularly when he didn't have that many left to reach his own goals.

Sasuke was willing to die to kill his brother. He could expose himself to potential enemies to help Naruto. The sacrifice he was making was, in the end, a small price to pay.

ooo

It helped that the Hokage had not ordered him to explain what each of the jutsus _were_. Just listing the names did not give that much information on the jutsu itself (what did 'chidori' really have to do with a screaming ball of lightning held in one's hand, after all?), and thanks to his bloodline limit, he could quite truthfully write that he learned a large portion of his techniques by copying them from his opponents or teachers, so those who wanted to learn about the technique could not glean information about the jutsu from the learning process. To further mask what he learned, he interspersed the jutsus between information on Otogakure, now useless since the village was disbanded when Orochimaru died. If they wanted him to compromise himself on paper, they'd have to wade through all the information they didn't want first.

It took him a good portion of two days to finish writing about the first three years of his five away from the village. He holed himself up in his bedroom while he did it, and in deference to the unspoken agreement he and Naruto had come to somewhere in the second month of each others' constant company, the other shinobi left him alone. This was good, because if Naruto ever found out what Sasuke was doing, he'd kill the council members himself and Sasuke would have to help him flee the country, thus making the sacrifice completely useless.

Writing the report got considerably easier once he moved on from the "training under Orochimaru" section to the "tracking Akatsuki in general and Uchiha Itachi in particular" section. He didn't mind sharing this information. In fact, he would have done so without a price had the Hokage or council asked him. He cared very little about Akatsuki, apart from the fact that they'd had his older brother as a member.

Unfortunately, he also had a considerably smaller amount of information to put in this section of his report. The first year he'd tracked Itachi he hadn't been the person tracking at all. He'd had Karin, whose bloodline limit made her a much better candidate for any form of tracking, lead Hebi in the right direction and had instead focused on having a vague plan for when they actually got where they were going. He'd moved alone during the second year, though, after his newly-created team had confronted Itachi and Kisame and Juugo died from throwing himself between Sasuke and Kisame's unnecessarily large sword.

Suigetsu had fucking _flayed_ the bastard for killing one of their comrades (and they had been comrades, whether or not they had come together as such), and Itachi had used Sasuke's distraction at having one comrade bleed to death in front of him to get in a few critical blows on his little brother, pin him to the ground with a hand around his neck, and force him to relive his family's murder. Again. Itachi had been a rather predictable fighter, really.

Sasuke left Karin and Suigetsu as soon as he was able to stand on his own again. Suigetsu had succeeded in winning Kisame's sword anyway, so he had no reason to stay, and Karin was probably better off not following Sasuke into certain death. The downside of this, of course, was that he'd needed to track Akatsuki on his own, and it had taken him another year of false leads and small confrontations with other Akatsuki members before he'd faced Itachi again.

He finished the report with an _extremely_ brief overview of the fight with Itachi (it boiled down to 'he lunged, I parried, he made a mistake, I chopped off his head and had a small nervous breakdown'), then tied up the scrolls he'd used to write the report and went in search of Naruto, who was to contact the Tower and let them know he was ready to turn it in.

It had taken him three days to finish, as opposed to the week he'd been given. He felt rather proud of himself.

ooo

Of course, it took another week until the Council actually got around to reviewing the mission report and judging it as meeting their requirements. From the decidedly grumpy look on Tsunade's face when she called Sasuke into her office to tell him there'd be a short ceremony in front of the Council the next day during which he'd be reinstated, they hadn't been quite happy with his exploitation of the loop holes in the orders, but there wasn't actually anything they could do without breaking the terms they themselves had set. Naruto spent the evening grinning like a loon, and would have likely continued the rest of the night, too, if Sasuke hadn't gotten fed up and challenged him to a spar on the pond. The resultant defeat had Naruto grumbling about foul play and glaring at Sasuke from under blond bangs for most of the night instead, which Sasuke was used to and thus could stomach more easily.

The mandate for a guard couldn't be lifted fast enough, he thought that night as he lay in bed and contemplated the ceiling that night. Naruto was a good teammate and a dedicated ninja, but four months of each other's constant company was far too much for any person to handle. He'd never exactly been what one would call a people person, after all, and over the years he'd gotten used to living alone. No, it was better that Naruto would be going back to his own apartment the next day. He was likely as sick of Sasuke's company as Sasuke was of his, and he had to be tired of sleeping in a sleeping bag on the floor of Sasuke's hallway.

They would see more than enough of each other, Sasuke thought decisively. After all, they'd be training together every day, so long as one of them wasn't on a mission. It was perfectly acceptable to be continuously annoyed for only a small portion of the day, rather than every waking moment. He would enjoy having quiet again.

Naruto never seemed capable of 'quiet,' unless he was asleep. _Then_ he slept like a damn log. Sasuke could just hear the sound of his breathing through the sliding door into his room. He wondered just when that sound had become an expected background noise, like the wind over the fields in Sound or the faint _tick tick tick_ of his mother's clock, when he'd still slept in his old room upstairs and could hear the sound through the wall that separated his room from his parents'.

He would get used to the absence of that breathing. If the time since the Massacre had taught him one thing, it was that you can get used to _anything_. Even silences made debilitatingly loud by the absence of those who would have banished them.

Sasuke shook his head in an attempt to get rid of that train of thought, making the pillow rustle as he did so. He was being ridiculous. Earlier that day, he couldn't _wait_ to get Naruto the hell out from under his feet. Sasuke wouldn't let the change lead him down the tracks of memory he'd been trying to lock away for the past three months. He turned so he was lying on his side and determinedly shut his eyes. He was going to sleep now.

…He wondered if it would be as hard to sleep tomorrow night as it was tonight. He'd admitted to himself ages ago that he slept better when he knew there was someone he trusted around to watch his back, so to speak. He hoped he wasn't going to end up lying awake every night, or even worse, dozing for short intervals and then pulling himself awake for a perimeter check, as though he were in enemy territory during a particularly delicate mission.

_Che_, he thought to himself, giving his overactive brain a little figurative shake. He'd slept badly in the past because there'd been people he didn't know standing outside his door, making it difficult to let down his guard. This time, though, Naruto would not be replaced by any silent strangers, invading Sasuke's space and putting him on edge. He'd be fine. He was just over-thinking this. Besides, even if sleep _did_ become a problem, it only necessitated he get some now.

…He wondered what time it was.

He sighed then, and got up, padding across the room. He knew better than to lie in bed and let his thoughts run when he couldn't sleep. He'd only keep himself awake worrying about the lack of rest he'd have. Better to go do something productive and try again in a few minutes. He went over to his dresser and changed out of his pajamas, then padded towards the door.

Naruto woke up the moment Sasuke opened his door, kunai drawn and eyes scanning the surroundings for what had caused the noise. He relaxed once he identified the disturbance as Sasuke. After all, this was hardly the first time he'd been woken up as Sasuke left his room for the various reasons one has to get out of bed at night. He got up and followed Sasuke down the hall, frowning when Sasuke bypassed the bathroom and kitchen. Sasuke glanced over his shoulder.

"I can't sleep," he told his guard by way of explanation. "I'm going to go outside and walk around a bit, maybe clear some of the weeds around the wall." Naruto scowled, and opened his mouth to protest (he, after all, was perfectly capable of sleeping), but whatever he was going to say never came. He shut his mouth again, his scowl becoming more a questioning frown. Sasuke walked away from him before he could ask what was wrong, slipping on his sandals at the door and quietly exiting the bright red house. A small, annoyed part of him noted that it looked vaguely purple in the moonlight (he was going to repaint one day, he really was). Naruto caught up with him about halfway to the path around the complex, wearing training pants and his jacket. He didn't say anything, for which Sasuke was strangely grateful.

So when the sun finally rose over the Hokage monument, changing the cliff face from purples and blues to yellows and oranges, Sasuke and Naruto were clearing rubble and weeds from around the wall all along the Uchiha district. As the first rays hit the roofs of the houses in the complex, Sasuke was contemplating the ivy that had been allowed to grow over the old stone. He _should_ pull it down, he knew. It was eroding the mortar, and besides, it was covering the Uchiha fans painted underneath. But the sun was hitting the leaves now, turning the ivy a golden green that whispered of the warm day to come. Sasuke frowned, and turned away, deciding to leave the vines alone. He liked them, and after all, the compound could only benefit from a little more life.

ooo

Sasuke disliked the Council room immediately upon entrance. It was circular, its stone walls bare and windowless, making the door Sasuke had just walked through the only way in or out. There was a large semi-circle table pushed to the far side of the room, the flat side facing the entrance, and the Council members sat along the other side. The Hokage had the place of honor in the center, with the civilian head of Council at her right hand and Shizune at her back. Sasuke scanned the shinobi clan heads that sat to the Hokage's left (Akimichis, Inuzukas, Aburames, and Hyuugas), and his eyes came to rest on an empty seat marked with an Uchiha fan. He forced his eyes back to the Hokage.

Tsunade had gotten to her feet when Sasuke first entered the room. She was in full Hokage regalia, hat of her office casting her eyes in shadows. Sasuke couldn't remember having ever seen the Hokage in full uniform (not that he'd been around, thus making his point of reference limited), and wondered why the Council had insisted on such ceremony for his reinstatement. He ignored the itch to turn his head and catch sight of the empty seat again.

"Uchiha Sasuke," the Hokage began formally. "You are here today at the Council's blessing to have those restrictions placed upon you at your return to Konohagakure removed and to be reinstated within our ranks as a genin of Konohagakure. This will place you under the full leadership of the Hokage…" her lips quirked, and Sasuke was reminded of the first time she'd delivered a Council decision to him, mentally adding the unspoken 'that would be me.' "…as leader of the village and commander of Konoha's ninja. In addition, as genin of the Leaf you will be considered a full citizen and legal adult of this village, thus answerable to this Council for your actions and obligated to do everything within your power to benefit and protect the village in which you live.

"Does Konoha accept these terms?" she asked, turning her head to her right. The Council leader stood up. He was an old, bald, frail man, his long arthritic fingers held tight to a cane, his face clean-shaven and wrinkled with age. His eyes drooped as he eyed the young man in front of him, a strange twist to his mouth that seemed like condescension.

"As head of the Council and Elder to the village, I accept on behalf of Konohagakure."

Tsunade turned back to Sasuke. "I accept these terms on behalf of the ninja of Konoha. Do you, Uchiha Sasuke, also accept?" Sasuke nodded. Tsunade nodded back and turn to Shizune, who stepped out from behind her and walked around the seated Council members until she reached Sasuke. Once there, she formally handed him a brand-new Konoha hitae-ate.

Sasuke took it from her and gave it a cursory look-over. It was neatly folded and polished, as yet unscratched from the usual wear and tear that most hitae-ates went through just from everyday use. His old one had not been nearly so unblemished, even excluding the large scratch clean through the leaf symbol it had sported courtesy of Naruto. He scoffed at himself inwardly, even as he unfolded this hitae-ate and tied it on. He wondered why he'd expected them to give him back the one he'd had when first a Konoha-nin. Besides the fact that the slash had certain connotations about his allegiances, all of which he was sure they felt they could do without, it had fit when he was thirteen, and thus likely wouldn't even be long enough to get around his head now.

Shizune went back to her place behind the Hokage, who was now seated again. The Council head remained standing.

"Uchiha-sama, allow me to be the first to congratulate you on your full return to our village," he said, his smile both formal and completely fake. "We on the Council look forward to the revival of your once powerful clan, and your subsequent future membership to this governing body." Sasuke didn't roll his eyes. He also didn't give into the urge to look at the empty chair again. He simply looked at the Council head until he became uncomfortable enough to sit down again.

Tsunade addressed him next, and her voice now carried a tone every ninja reacted to almost instinctively: that of a superior addressing her subordinate. "You are dismissed. Report to the mission office at 0700 tomorrow for your first assignment." Sasuke didn't bow. He was no longer supposed to. Instead, he snapped to attention and saluted, before turning on his heel and exiting the Council room. As he left, he heard Tsunade begin what was presumably the next order of business. "Now, I'd like to bring your attention to the recent report of Akatsuki movement in…" the door closed, cutting off her voice, and Sasuke was alone in the corridor with Naruto. Who was beaming again. Idiot…

ooo

It took Sasuke and Naruto ten minutes to walk back to the compound, and a depressingly short half hour to pack away all traces of Naruto's four month stay in Sasuke's hallway. It would have taken less time, except Sasuke said something scathingly sarcastic about just now remembering he had a floor outside his bedroom, and Naruto took it upon himself to reintroduce Sasuke to it personally. The scuffle ended in a draw when the two managed to roll into Sasuke's door. Then Naruto took the first fully-packed bags to his apartment while Sasuke mended the tear in the paper and pushed the wood frame back into the groove that allowed it to slide.

All in all, it took eight bags and two trips to fully move Naruto out, even with the training every ninja had crammed into his or her head during Academy about packing light and dissolving camp quickly and Sasuke carrying some of the bags on the second trip. He wondered if the added complication was because somewhere along the line, Naruto had gotten as used to being there as Sasuke now was to having him there, and had stopped treating the situation like a camp site on a long-term mission. People tend to spread out a lot more when at home, after all.

The whole affair left Sasuke emotionally exhausted, for some reason. The good-bye at Naruto's door was awkward, as they weren't quite sure what to say to each other. Naruto finally settled on a gruff "See ya at training later, then," and walked into his apartment without glancing back. Sasuke was actually grateful, since it meant he didn't have to come up with anything in response, and turned to make the walk back to his –_ghost-filled_– now-empty house. He ignored the stares of the people he past in the streets, all either wary that he was no longer flanked by guards or surprised at the hitae-ate he now wore. They could all jump off the Hokage monument for all he cared, at this point.

Still, he was almost relieved to get back to the unnatural silence of his family's empty compound. He felt eyes on his back here, too, but they were the eyes of the long-dead, and he had lived with them long enough that the perusal of his sub-conscious was almost comfortable. Not quite comfortable enough for him to brave the house where his brother had murdered his parents alone, but not really distracting, either.

The sun's promise of a bright day had been kept, and the rays reflected off the white and red walls of the buildings around him harshly. He stopped walking and, frowning at them, made a decision. Turning on his heel, he went back out the way he came, past the gate and towards the store he knew sold paint supplies and paint not that far from here. It was high time the damned place got a new color scheme. He thought shades of green would be nice, like the colors of the ivy growing on the walls.

ooo

It was dusk when Sasuke finally got back to his house, starving and exhausted from the physical labor of scraping off peeling paint and sanding the area to make way for primer. He'd managed to finish preparing one wall today, which wasn't much progress, but enough for him to retire for the night satisfied. He left the door open on the way into the house, and opened windows as he walked towards the kitchen to make dinner (Sakura had made enough meals to last the two young men until a week after she was scheduled to return, in case something went wrong). He was a little distracted, which was his only excuse for not noticing the object lying on the floor until he'd almost stepped on it.

He frowned as sharingan flashed, allowing him to check the object for any threat it might possess. Finding nothing obvious, he bent forward to pick it up, holding it up to the dying light coming through the windows. It was an old hitae-ate, blue cloth blood-stained and ragged, metal plate scratched in several places and scored through the middle of the leaf symbol. It was small, too, the size they gave out to newly-graduated academy students. It had been facing down so the light wouldn't hit the metal and make it immediately noticeable…

Sasuke stopped, his hands tightening around it.

_…you won't even be able to put a single scratch on my forehead…_

He couldn't believe Naruto had kept this.

The implications of the action, both of holding onto the scarred symbol of Konoha and leaving it in the middle of Sasuke's floor for him to find, were enormous. It wasn't wearable anymore, of course, useful now only as a memento of days spent doing stupid D-rank missions with his team, nights spent lazing about with people whose company he actually tolerated, watching the stars, and a fight to what he'd thought was the death, facing dark red eyes which were an eerie mirror to his own…

_Why, Naruto? Why would you go so far for me?_

_This is one of the first bonds I've ever had…_

Sasuke spent a moment debating whether or not to go out and throw the damn thing in the lake. He was really fucking tired of memories showing up out of nowhere when he didn't want to face them. The Valley of the End was… something he'd come to terms with a long time ago. He didn't need to spend ages agonizing over it when he knew, if he could do it over, that he'd make the same decision. And damn Naruto for never knowing when to leave well enough alone.

He scowled, then loosened his fingers around the old metal, suddenly feeling very tired. He didn't… some of these memories were good ones. He didn't want to completely block them out, shove them into that place in his head where everything that was a distraction went and lock the door on his way out. Maybe he would have, before, but things were different now. Itachi was dead. There was no reason why he couldn't have good memories to fall back on anymore.

He finally decided to put the hitae-ate in the bottom drawer of his dresser and forget about it, a compromise of sorts. He wouldn't think about this tonight, but he would, eventually.

As he walked back out towards the kitchen again, he noticed that full dark had fallen while he wasn't paying attention. He scowled at the windows, then went to close them and turn on all the lamps.

Then he went and made dinner.

ooo

AN: Whew! –cracks neck– Thank god _that's_ over. –pats her little genin– You did good, kiddo. :D

So, as I'm sure you've all noticed, this is not a Sunday. I decided to try out different posting days, since I'm finding it rather hard to find time on Sunday. I'm debating between either Saturday or Monday, or Sunday, really, it could turn out it's the best day after all… Anyway, expect a few posts _around_ but not _on_ Sunday for a while. If I haven't posted by Monday, I'll have something on my bio telling you to stop waiting this week.

Right! So, I'd like to say a big 'thank you' to my reviewers, Jade, Reiven, and Boshoku.

Jade: Thanks for being my crutch through the writing, m'dear. It's always very much appreciated

Reiven: o.O I would just like to say that this review came at the end of an absolutely abominable day and made it better. I'm so glad you're enjoying my fic that much. Thank you!

Boshoku: –laughs– Well, team7 has always had that bit of 'they're gonna do _what_ together? They'll _kill_ each other!' going on for me. I'm glad it's kind of coming through. It's nice to have someone else regularly fear for their lives when they interact… –grin–

Hope you all enjoy this chapter! Chapter 8 is all planned out, and hopefully will be done at the end of the week. Cross your fingers for me!

Adi


	8. Chapter 8

Chapter 8

Sasuke reported to the missions office the next morning at the specified time, but still waited about three minutes until he was called in. This was to be expected, of course. Ninja returning from missions were required to report here upon completion, and they took priority over those who did not yet have missions with the exception of missions dubbed vitally important. Sasuke doubted he'd be getting any that held the fate of Konoha or her allies in the balance on his first day as a full shinobi after five years of missing-nin status.

Of course, that didn't mean he was an any more patient individual, though granted it was better than the last time Tsunade made him wait to meet with her. Thus, when he was finally allowed in he began speaking as soon as his salute was acknoweldged. "Hokage-sama, when I first went to your office I told you I wished to take the upcoming chuunin exam."

The Hokage blinked at him, then frowned, sighing. "You want to take the chuunin exam. There are so many things wrong with that, I don't know where to start."

Sasuke raised an eyebrow, momentarily taken aback. "I don't see a problem," he informed her. "I'm overqualified to be a chuunin."

She raised an eyebrow back. "A little full of yourself, aren't you?" she murmured before leaning forward and placing her folded arms on the desk in front of her. Then she grinned. "Let me enlighten you, then." She raised a finger. "One: you don't have a team to take the chuunin exam _with_, and you have to enter with two other people."

"There are always single genin who apply for the exam," Sasuke pointed out.

"Yes, but most of those genin have already been _given_ teams by the Council. The exam's in a month, anyway, and even if you _find_ a team, you won't have enough time to learn each-other's fighting styles or grow comfortable enough with each other to depend on one another should it become necessary. Plus, most of those genin apply with the approval of their jounin senseis, which you also don't have. You need approval from the Council, and I doubt they'll give it to you. Which brings me to problem number two." She raised a second finger. "I'm sorry to say this, Uchiha, but the Council was looking forward to having a highly trained shinobi that Konoha could pay on a genin scale. It's a chance for Konoha to raise its income significantly, and they won't give it up easily.

"Finally," she continued, raising another finger, "and possibly most importantly, you will need to present your case to the Council personally, since they will be in charge of whether or not you go. The Council meets once a month." She folded her fingers together and sat back in her seat. "The last meeting was yesterday."

"So I can't take the exam because the Council doesn't want to meet more than once a month," Sasuke clarified flatly, feeling his temper flare alarmingly even as he forced his familiar mask of impassiveness into place to cover it.

"I'm saying you should have brought it up yesterday," Tsunade corrected. "Now, I can call the Council together again, but it will take a week at least, and they won't be happy with you.

"So, all in all, we are looking at three weeks at most to find you two other genin without a team, give you a chance to have a few training sessions together, and send you on your way to Grass, where the exam is this time. Grass is a five day walk from here, so we're actually looking at closer to two weeks. Less, because the chances of getting the Council to convene again in a week and then simply allowing you to go without getting something from you in return are pretty slim. Quite frankly, Uchiha, it'd probably be easier for you to take the exam next time."

Sasuke was careful not to show his aggravation in his body language. "I need to take it _this_ time, because I am aiming to take the jounin exam in seven months and I need to be a chuunin to do so."

Tsunade frowned at him. "You have unrealistically high goals, kid," she grumbled. "Fine, but if I'm going to do this for you, you need to damn well be in the village when the Council convenes. That means you take the boring, D-rank missions I give you and like it, clear?"

Sasuke did not grit his teeth, but he thought about it. "Yes, Hokage-sama."

ooo

It turned out that Sasuke would be not gritting his teeth a lot over the next few days. D-ranked missions were exactly as he remembered them: boring as hell, essentially useless training-wise and a complete waste of time for any ninja who could as much as hold a kunai correctly. Sasuke had never understood why the citizens of Konoha felt it necessary to hire trained killers to patch their roofs or walk their dogs. It seemed to him to be a complete waste of a valuable resource.

That first day he was given the absolutely riveting task of weeding gardens for elderly people who could no longer do it themselves. It was repetitive, dirty work that took an extraordinarily large amount of time to accomplish, as the only way to carry out the task without hurting the plants around the weeds was to get down on all fours and pull out the unwanted vegetation by hand. Sasuke didn't finish until seven, two hours after he'd told Naruto he'd meet him for training, and thus only managed about an hour of _useful_ work before the light completely gave out. Sasuke got home dirty, hungry, annoyed with the little training he'd been able to do and frustrated with the thought that he had at _least_ another six days to go.

The second day was remarkably like the first, with weeding replaced with acting as a demonstrator (also known as "moving target") for academy teachers who were attempting to show their students the proper way to throw a kunai. Sasuke couldn't decide which part of the experience was worse: brats with pointy objects or brats who _couldn't aim_ with pointy objects.

The third day he spent the entire morning attempting to repair an old, rotting shed that a store owner wanted to use for storage. He finally just declared the structure a fire waiting to happen, tore the damn thing down, and recommended in his mission report that the owner get someone to build him a new shed, preferably one built in such a way that it wouldn't come down on someone's head unexpectedly.

The fourth day, he built a new shed.

ooo

Naruto received a B-rank mission on the fifth day. Not that Sasuke cared, of course. Naruto was seven B-ranks short of being eligible to take the jounin exam, and if he didn't get them all Sasuke's suffering these last few days would be completely for nothing.

"It's one of those courier missions," Naruto explained, rolling his eyes as he and Sasuke stretched out in preparation of a spar. "I've got to take this scroll full of political bullshit to the daimyo and wait for him to respond to Baa-chan. It wouldn't even _be_ a B-rank, except the daimyo got a death threat the other day, and the entire palace is on high alert. Anyway, Baa-chan wanted to send me with Kakashi-sensei and Sai, since Sakura-chan is still off at that village terrifying little kids with needles," Sakura was giving vaccinations to a village where a particularly persistent strain of measles was sweeping through the population's children, "but I told her I could handle it myself. I mean, what could happen, the palace is only a day's run away, right?"

Sasuke _really_ didn't care, and he didn't want to talk about this anymore. "Hn," he said noncommittally, following it up with "Are you ready yet or not?"

"Yeah, yeah…" Naruto trailed off into incomprehensible grumbling, which ended in a very clear and concise "bastard." Sasuke raised an eyebrow, at him, which resulted in a rather dirty look, and they both walked into the center of the training area, sliding into a fighting position facing each other.

They circled for a moment, each eying the other for a weakness in his stance, each waiting to see who would move first.

Predictably, Naruto made the first strike. Sasuke jumped back as a fist came at his head, throwing a few shuriken at his opponent to break Naruto's seal. The trick these days, Sasuke had learned, was to keep Naruto so busy dodging he didn't have a chance to create any kage bunshen, with which he had become rather creative. He was aware this wouldn't work in a real fight (Naruto didn't need a kage bunshin to make the lowest level of rasengan any more), but in a regular sparring match like this, it was perfectly acceptable. It was also rather funny to watch Naruto's face turn red from frustration, but Sasuke told himself this was not the main force behind his strategy.

He pivoted and sent a leg toward Naruto's stomach. This caused Naruto to dive sideways and land on his right hand, which he used for leverage to kick out at Sasuke's own legs. Sasuke blocked and used the momentum to send Naruto spinning to the side, off-balance. Naruto countered by continuing the spin and coming out with a kunai, which he aimed as Sasuke's exposed neck. Sasuke caught the projectile and sent it back at its owner, forcing Naruto to dodge again, cursing.

Sasuke pressed his attack, staying inside Naruto's guard and making sure his hands were always busy doing something other than forming a seal. He threw a shuriken for a distraction, causing Naruto to dodge to the right, then followed through with a punch, which he expected Naruto to dodge again. Instead, Naruto blocked, then switched his grip on Sasuke's arm and threw him over his head. This put Sasuke between himself and the shuriken he'd thrown only a moment ago. Normally, this wouldn't be a problem, except Sasuke had just tugged the ninja wire attached to the projectile and reversed its direction, sending it back towards his sparring partner. Sasuke cursed and got out of the way (apparently Naruto knew a bit about his fighting style as well) and turned just in time to see five kage bunshin poof into existence and scatter. He narrowed his eyes and activated sharingan, even as he sprung back to put some distance between himself and his opponent. The two paused, breathing heavily, eying each other again and taking these new weapons into account. Naruto was grinning.

He saw the flare of chakra and jumped just as one of the kage bunshins came out of the ground at his feet. He fell backwards and pushed off his arms, kicking the bunshin in the chest and dispelling it. He landed just as another bunshin to his right threw a kunai, and he threw one of his own, dispelling the weapon. The kunai continued forward towards the bunshin, which dodged sideways. Sasuke blocked a kick from it, then used its momentum to propel it into a bunshin that had come up behind him, dispelling them both. Then he pivoted and blocked a punch from the bunshin behind him before punching toward it's head. Instead of taking the hit and dispelling, or dodging out of the way, though, the Naruto in front of him blocked and threw a punch of his own, which Sasuke caught and pushed himself off of to get a little distance from what was definitely his actual opponent. Naruto laughed, acknowledging that Sasuke had identified him. "Running away, are you?" he called.

"_Che_. Idiot," Sasuke retorted, and pulled his sheathed sword out of his belt, using its reach to dispel a bunshin that was coming up on him from his left.

"Oi," Naruto shouted, though there wasn't much actual anger in the sound. "If you're using the sword I get to use something else, too!"

Sasuke smirked. "Less, talk, more sparring, moron," he responded, "unless you think you can't keep up." He moved into the offensive.

Naruto made a sound that might have been an indignant shout in a past life, but in this one sounded more like an indignant squawk, and made a few more kage bunshins as a shield. Sasuke dug the edge of the sword sheath into the ground and punted over them, a shuriken whizzing over his shoulder from one as he did so. The wind chakra that had been added to lengthen the blades cut a thin gash over his collar-bone. _Damn_, Sasuke thought, landing. That was first blood, which meant the match was over. He scowled at his companion, even as Naruto raised a fist in triumph and did a victory dance. "You used wind blades. It doesn't count."

"Ha! You're just angry because I drew first blood," Naruto crowed, falling backwards and grinning up at the darkening sky.

"Moron," Sasuke snapped, stalking over to glare down at his sparring partner. Naruto looked unrepentant.

"_You_ pulled out your _sword_," he pointed out. "Rules say I can retaliate with anything I want, so long as it's not a one-hit technique." Sasuke, who had come up with that rule over a month ago, had no response to this.

"Hn," he said non-commitally.

Naruto snorted. "Sore loser." Sasuke chose not to reward this childish comeback with any sort of response, instead putting his sword away and collecting the various kunai and shuriken he'd thrown during the spar. Then he turned towards his friend and raised an eyebrow.

"Any time tonight, dead-last?" They only had a few more hours until Naruto needed to leave on his mission, after all.

"Yeah, yeah," Naruto sighed, pushing himself to his feet and swinging his arms as though to loosen them again. He grinned as he fell into a fighting stance. "Didn't know you were so eager to get your ass kicked again, bastard."

"You wish," Sasuke responded, and moved from a relaxed stance into an attack without warning. Damned if the dead-last idiot would beat him twice in one night.

ooo

_That night, he dreamed that he was running down a hallway that had no end, completely alone. His footfalls, echoing off the stark white walls, sounded abnormally loud, until he realized that they weren't just his footsteps, but hundreds of them, all falling in time with his own, all behind him. Fear made his stomach contract, and he sped up, looking straight ahead, terrified of glancing behind him at his unknown ghostly followers, none of whom made any sound except that of their feet hitting the wood flooring._

_And then, suddenly, he knew with startling clarity what he'd see. Mangled corpses, dripping blood from wounds they had gotten years ago, staining the ground they covered red. He couldn't let them catch him, because if he did, that blood would cover him. He took another step…_

_…And instead of wood his foot sunk into liquid. He tried to pull back, tried to use chakra to run over the pool, except he couldn't, he couldn't control his body, and he fell into the fluid, which was thick and sticky and warm and red instead of clear, and as he drowned in it he felt that he'd lost, or failed, and that was somehow unforgivable._

_Then he was in the Uchiha complex, dripping blood that was not his, with Itachi standing over him. "Foolish little brother," he crooned, reaching down and grabbing Sasuke by the neck, pinning him up against a wall, stark white in the moonlight. "Did you think I would die that easily? Did you think you could forget me? Weak!" He pulled Sasuke's head forward by his neck and then slammed it backwards, causing pain to lance his victim's skull. He leaned forward and whispered into his ear, like he'd done when Sasuke was thirteen and still a Konoha-nin with no thought of ever leaving… "You lack hatred."_

_Except it was Sasuke who'd whispered it to himself, because suddenly he was Itachi, pinning his little brother to a wall in the district he'd killed so many, and the boy he was holding there was only seven and completely defenseless, and he drew a sword from a rope belt tied around his waist (but Itachi never wore a belt like that…) and set the blade to his brother's neck, and, oh so carefully, pressed down…_

Sasuke sat up straight in bed, gasping, and in that moment between being fully asleep and fully awake, he was seven again, and the last few years had all been a dream, Itachi's _death_ had been a dream, his family was newly dead and he was still so _weak_… Then he woke fully, and he was nearly eighteen, in what had once been a guest room of his family's old house, shaking and covered in cold sweat, his heart pounding in his ears like he really had just run down that hallway and fallen into his family's blood.

It had been a dream.

He could still feel cold steel at his throat.

He ran a hand over his face and took a deep breath, desperately trying to pull himself together. The darkness in the room pressed in, and he shut his eyes tightly, though whether he was trying to block the bits of the nightmare that kept replaying in his head or hiding from the possibility of seeing one of the figures gliding out of the shadows even he couldn't say. He pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes, causing lights to spark behind them, and for just a second they looked like blood staining stark white walls…

He needed to get out of this room. He got up and walked over to his dresser, pulling out a clean tank-top and pair of training pants and changing out of the clothes he slept in with quick, efficient movements. Then he walked out into the hallway and towards the door, pausing only to put on his shoes before leaving the dark house behind him. He had no idea where he was going, but he was damned if he'd go there in pajamas.

But coming outside was a mistake, he realized, as he looked around him at the empty grounds. The night was too clear, the streets too quiet, and if Sasuke looked hard enough, he could almost see a figure crouching atop the electric pole… He shivered and took a few hesitant steps away from the door. His stomach was clenching, as though he had forgotten to do something important and couldn't remember what, and he latched onto that feeling, trying to reason it out. Suddenly he couldn't stay in the doorway, back to the nameless terrors in the house, for another moment. He set off along the deserted streets, walking aimlessly, trying not to listen to his feet hitting the ground.

He was almost relieved when he found himself at the training fields, even though there wasn't a moon tonight and he could barely see his hand in front of his face, let alone any jutsus he might try. These fields hadn't starred in his dream, and so he could stay here and train himself to exhaustion, and possibly get back to sleep again. Fatigue that had nothing to do with physical energy was clawing at the back of his eyes and making his thoughts muddy, and that was making it easier for… he shook his head, forced down the dreamed feeling of drowning in his family's blood, and decided he'd to the most physically taxing form of training available to him.

So two o'clock in the morning found Uchiha Sasuke, genin of the Leaf and one of the most dangerous men alive, on his family's old training grounds, repetitively punching a wooden pole in an attempt to drown out the voice of his brother, which had driven him out of bed in something disgustingly close to a panic. _Pathetic_… The word flitted through his mind in a voice he couldn't place as his or Itachi's. He frowned, and punched a little harder, sweat breaking out on his forehead and a slow burn beginning in his abdominal and arm muscles. _All this time, and you're still running_.

Shut up, he told the voice in his head, narrowing his eyes at the pole without really seeing it.

_Why are you weak?_

Shut. Up.

_You lack hatred._

And what if he did, he thought, pounding harder. What did it matter anymore? He was done. Itachi was dead. He was _dead_.

_And you're still too weak to help the one person you care about…_

No, he wasn't. He didn't need to _cure_ Naruto to help.

_Useless,_ the voice hissed. _Useless and weak, latching onto a path others have laid out before you because you're too scared to face the reality of not having a purpose of your own…_

Bullshit, he had plenty to live for.

_Are you sure?_

Yes, of course he was sure.

_Then why are you out here, beating a pole, and trying to pretend that nothing is wrong?_

He stopped, wide-eyed. What was he _doing_ out here? Why was he training in the dead of night, fighting with himself about being weak? He _wasn't_ weak, had proven at least that much to himself when he'd separated Itachi's head from its body. Hadn't he?

The training ground was slowly turning from shades of grey to golds and greens with the coming dawn. When had it gotten so late, he thought almost dazedly, looking east at the lightening sky, and swiping the back of his hand over his forehead. His knuckles stung as the sweat hit them, and he looked down, startled, to realize that he didn't _have_ anything that counted as knuckles anymore. He'd scraped all of the skin from them to the first knuckles of his fingers, so that they were swollen and bleeding sluggishly. His left wrist gave a throb in a way that generally indicated a fracture. Even worse, though, was that he couldn't remember it happening, couldn't remember _feeling_ it happen, which he was certain he should have. He shifted his eyes to the pole, which now had an indent of about an inch and a half where he'd been punching, and the entire area covered in a dark red smear. He couldn't remember when that happened either…

His knees suddenly seemed too wobbly to hold him, and he sunk down, still staring at the pole, but again not actually seeing it. He felt numb, tired, adrift as he hadn't since fighting Naruto at the Valley.

Only this time, there was no reason to force himself to his feet.

ooo

All the literature Sasuke could ever remember reading, all the movies he'd ever seen, had given him the impression that accepting there was something seriously wrong with you should drive you to want to fix it. Kneeling at the base of a post on the Uchiha training grounds, injured and tired, he felt he'd been lied to.

It seemed like the air had become thicker, like it does on those cool, humid days that usually precede a cold rain. He felt like he was moving through soup, his skin clammy from excess moisture. He kept looking up at the clear sky and being surprised that it wasn't overcast. He wondered vaguely if he was going into shock, but he couldn't summon the energy to care very much.

He'd known for years that just _living_ wasn't enough for any person, but that didn't change the fact that he'd suddenly found himself in a situation where he was doing just that. He didn't know how to fix it, how to go about finding a new reason for waking up in the morning. He'd been relying on other people to keep him moving, Naruto with his boundless energy and apparently effortless optimism, Sakura with her firm resolve and steady place in the world. He envied them their chosen paths, a bit. He remembered it was nice knowing where you were going and what was waiting for you there.

He hadn't realized he'd fallen asleep until someone calling him woke him up. The sun was nearly directly above him, and he had been kneeling with his hands in his lap and forehead against the pole in front of him. He turned to look at who had been calling him, and vaguely recognized him as one of those jounin Tsunade habitually gave all the stupid, menial jobs to. He couldn't remember his name.

"Uchiha-san?" he called again. "Are you awake?" Sasuke raised an eyebrow at him. He thought that had been made supremely obvious when he turned his head to look. The jounin relaxed, and it occurred to Sasuke that he'd been afraid the younger man would wake up fighting. "Hokage-sama sent me to find you and bring you to the missions office, since you didn't report there this morning." His eyes slid downwards a little and he addressed the next words to Sasuke's hands. "I think, though, that it would be better to bring you to the hospital first." Hospital? Sasuke looked at his hands as well. Yes, that seemed like a good idea. It wouldn't do to let this get worse or infected, if only because he didn't want to take the Chuunin exam with such a handicap as being visibly injured. He had decided, sometime in his sleep, that this goal could at least keep him putting one foot in front of the other. Being the only surviving Uchiha and a genin at eighteen was pathetic.

So he got to his feet and started walking towards the hospital, his makeshift guide hovering at his left, presumably in case an injury to his hands somehow affected his equilibrium. It would be the second time in three months that he'd been escorted there. Somehow, he couldn't work up the will to be amused.

ooo

Compared to what many of the medic-nin at Konoha's hospital saw on a regular basis, Sasuke's hands were extremely minor, barely registering on their "injury scale" at all. They had him sit in the waiting room for about three hours before he was called in and a trainee cleaned the wounds out, stitched him up some, bound the injuries with clean gauze, and gave him a soft splint for what was determined was a stress fracture in his left wrist. He was given a pain medication to take the edge off, ordered to wear the splint for a few weeks until he came back in to get the stitches removed (at which time they'd see how he was doing), forced to swear he wouldn't let his bandages or wounds get wet while they were healing, and sent on his way. Sasuke thought it was a long time to wait for about fifteen minutes of treatment.

He'd been given the rest of the day off (not that it really mattered, as it was now three in the afternoon and too late to start a mission anyway), so he went home. He still felt chilled, like maybe he was coming down with a fever, so he made and drank some tea and went to bed. He was asleep before fully lying down.

His dreams were uneasy, but when he finally woke up at about ten-thirty that night, he couldn't remember what he'd dreamed about. The shivery feeling had passed, leaving behind it just a grey feeling that nagged at the corners of his mind like a river lapping at stones on its bank. He debated rolling over and going back to sleep.

In the end, though, a need to use the bathroom won out over the appealing thought of never leaving his warm cocoon under the blankets ever again, and once he was on his feet he realized he was _extremely thirsty_. He made his way to his chosen destinations, deciding that while he was getting water he could get something to eat, too.

There was a scroll sitting on the counter when he entered the kitchen.

He paused, sharingan whirring to life as he stared at it, his fists clenching unconsciously in self-directed anger. Someone had been in his house, in his _kitchen_, and he hadn't noticed their presence. What the hell was wrong with him?

He walked over and picked it up, glancing at the seal (the Hokage's, so maybe he hadn't noticed because it'd been sent by a hawk?) before breaking it and scanning the brief message. Then he stopped and read it again more slowly.

It was a summons to the Council room the following day at 8:00 AM to discuss his possible entry into the upcoming chuunin exam. At the bottom was a brief message obviously penned by the Hokage herself.

_You owe me. Brat._

The universe, Sasuke decided as he balled up the message and threw it with greater-than-necessary force into the trash, had absolutely impeccable timing.

ooo

The Council head sighed, slumping a little in his seat as he did so, and shuffling through the papers in front of him as though the movements were painful. Honestly, Sasuke couldn't blame him. Two and a half hours in a hot, windowless room going over the same three or four arguments consecutively was starting to get to him, too. In fact, the Hokage had left about two hours ago, pleading paperwork. "Once again, Uchiha-sama, the Council simply does not have the available ninja to place you on a team at this time."

"I'm hardly asking for a permanent team," Sasuke told him mildly for what felt like the eighth or ninth time, valiantly striving for calm in a sea of infuriating bureaucracy. He _really_ wasn't in the mood for this today. "Just two other genin who were unable to take the chuunin exam this time around because they didn't have a team."

"There _is_ nobody at this time," the Council head responded, the aggravation that had been slowly growing in his voice for the past hour going up another notch. "Besides which, the Council feels…"

"That I would be better put to stay in Konoha," Sasuke interrupted, finishing the sentence for him. "Doing what, exactly? D-rank missions fit for a team-less genin? I'm not, by contract, obligated to accept anything else in my current situation."

The man's lips thinned. The Council, Sasuke knew, had hoped that they would be able to get him to accept higher-level missions on a genin's salary. He'd spent the last two hours making it very clear that he intended to do no such thing, and any attempt to force him to do so would be an infringement on his contract as a full shinobi of Konoha and thus an indication that he was still a prisoner, in which case they could go fuck themselves. Prisoners didn't have to do squat for the village in which they were imprisoned. The old man didn't respond directly, as he hadn't the last several times he'd been reminded of this, instead changing directions. Again.

"We feel, actually, that as the last member of your clan, it would be best if you remained safely within Konoha's area of jurisdiction until your blood-line limit has been secured."

"As you've said," Sasuke replied through gritted teeth. If the bastard tried to use his clan against him again, he was going to kill him, act of treason be damned. "And my response still stands." That is, that it was crazy to get married and have children on a genin's salary, and he wouldn't do it.

"I'm afraid we need more insurance than that, Uchiha-sama."

"I've already said I'm willing to marry after passing."

"But what good will that do us if you die in an enemy village?" the old man snapped at him. Sasuke raised an eyebrow in response. They'd have to _catch_ him before they could kill him, after all.

They were at an impasse, had been for the past hour and a half. It was ridiculous, and everyone knew it. Eventually, someone was going to have to make concessions, and with all the stubbornness of a young man who'd given up everything just for a shot at cracking his psychopathic older brother's head open, Sasuke was determined that he wouldn't give the first one. It came down to this: did they want his cooperation and genes more than he wanted to be a chuunin?

The Council head's jaw worked as he looked Sasuke over, obviously grinding his teeth. Sasuke kept his own face blank. "There's nobody available to make up a three-man team," the old man said again.

"Find someone," Sasuke demanded.

"You're injured."

"I'm fully capable of using my hands regardless." He'd proved it, in fact, about an hour ago by drawing his sword and cutting up the paper in his adversary's hands before he'd seen him move. The old man frowned even deeper at the reminder, then rubbed his temples.

"Even if you could be sent," he began, slowly, as though every word was being forced out of him by torture, "you would be under restrictions." The other villages, wary of any overly-trained genin since Gaara of the Sand's first chuunin exam, had apparently kicked up quite the fuss at the suggestion that Sasuke participate. "Your passing would be hinged on that of your prospective teammates."

"That's acceptable," Sasuke told him, the 'as I've already told you repeatedly' going unsaid.

The Council head looked unconvinced, but leaned back in his seat anyway, sighing again. "You don't give an inch, do you?" he asked, almost as though to himself. Sasuke blinked in surprise at the hint of respect on the old man's face. "I look forward to having you on this Council." He straightened up, suddenly business-like. "Very well, Uchiha-sama. If this Council is capable of finding two other genin to make up a three-man team, you will be allowed to enter the exam in Grass starting in 22 days' time. The conditions on such an entry are, of course, the restrictions on your passing the exam, and the assumption that you would marry within a year of your return. If the latter condition is not met, the Council reserves the right to choose a bride for you. Is this acceptable?"

Stay the hell away from my family, Sasuke wanted to say, absolutely livid at the intrusion into his personal life. It's none of your business who or when I marry. He bit his tongue, clenching his fists and looking away from the damned, opportunistic, manipulative bastard until he'd managed to force a mask of cold indifference back onto his face. He wouldn't give the fucker the satisfaction of knowing just how much he hated it when people thought they knew better than he about his clan. They had _no_ right to… He took a silent, calming breath. This wasn't the place to explode. He'd accept the terms and get the hell out of here, and think about it when he could do so logically. He looked up and nodded once.

"Well, then, we'll be in touch, Uchiha-sama," the old man said, obviously relieved. "You may go." Sasuke debated not bowing, but decided after nearly three hours of this bullshit it would be a shame to have them retract the offer now. He inclined his head stiffly and exited the stuffy room, heading towards the missions office to receive his crappy D-rank mission chopping wood. At the very least, he could take out some of his pent-up frustration and anger on a few defenseless logs.

ooo

When he got home that night, sweaty, tired and dirty, there was another scroll waiting for him. This one said his teammates would expect him at 7:00 the next day in Konoha's second biggest training ground. He stared at the scroll blankly for another few moments, then put it down on his counter, took a shower and went to bed.

ooo

AN: Alright! First thing's first. I'm not going to be in town next week (sorry, all), so I won't have anything to post. I'm going to Utah with my family for hiking, canyons, and pretty rocks. :D

Secondly, if you were surprised by the breakdown, it's because Sasuke was surprised by it, too. It wasn't really about the dream (that was just the catalyst), and it's been building for a while (he's living alone in the house where his entire family was murdered, he's unhappy with the missions he's getting, he's under stress to convince the Council to let him take the exam despite the Hokage saying it's pretty much hopeless, the only person he admits to himself is a friend is off on a mission, to say nothing of dying, and to top it off he's been forcing all the memories he doesn't want to deal with to the back of his mind). It was bound to happen eventually. –shrug–

And last but certainly not least, thank you to Split Persona, Boshoku, and sasunarupanda for the reviews.

Split Persona: Thank you! I'm glad you're enjoying it. You'll find out who he'll be working with next chapter. I'm looking forward to writing Sasuke trying to work with two ankle-biting genin, believe me… –grin–

Boshoku: It is indeed. I'm afraid this chapter is also angsty in some parts, as you have probably noticed. This is because Sasuke is one screwed-up chickadee, and as such has a lot of angst to pass around. He's starting to get a bit better, though! No matter what he thinks, knowing there's a problem can only help.

Sasunaru panda: Hope the sparring fit the bill!

Well, that's it, I think. Until next time!


	9. Chapter 9

Chapter 9

The training ground to which Sasuke had been ordered was unlike any of the others in which he'd trained. For one, it didn't have the normal three wooden posts in its center. Instead, a large oak tree had been planted, or rather, the area around it had been cleared to create a training field. The tree was enormous, its canopy shielding nearly the entirety of the field from the sun, its roots pushing through the dirt to make the actual training ground uneven. What wasn't taken up by these roots was covered in the normal dried and rotting leaves and branches found on a forest floor, making the illusion of training in Konoha's surrounding woods complete. The trunk itself, large enough that it would take four people with their arms outstretched to fully surround it, was scored with kunai and shuriken marks, dotted here and there with mounted and well-used targets.

At seven in the morning, the sun was peeking through the branches and casting a golden glow over the earth and ground cover, and the leaves on the trees were whispering of a slight breeze that swept over the village. Sasuke, who had just arrived, crossed over the natural mulch silently, with the unconscious skill of a ninja born and raised in Konohagakure. At any other time, he would probably have found the empty training ground peaceful, even comfortable. Now, however, he was much more annoyed that his new teammates were late for their first meeting. It did not bode well for the rest of their time training together. His eyes narrowed in irritation, then he climbed the tree to a height at which he would see his teammates coming and settled back to wait.

At about 7:02, Sasuke caught sight of two figures coming out of the trees surrounding an adjoining training field. They appeared to be walking together, and if the ease and silence of the movements of the one on the right was any indication, he was a jounin. Probably the sensei of the one on the left, considering the seemingly endless lecture. The left figure looked vaguely familiar, with brown scraggly hair and big glasses, and Sasuke searched his memory until he placed him as one of those kids who used to follow Naruto around, the ones who always announced themselves with stupid epitaphs. Which was this one, he wondered. Not Konohamaru, he was the one with the ponytail who called Naruto 'nii-san.' This was the other one, the one in desperate need of a tissue… Amon? Udon? Possibly. Sasuke figured he'd find out soon enough.

Possibly-Udon seemed to be only half listening to his sensei as though the lecture was a common occurance, the rest of his concentration on looking around him. Sasuke could only assume he was seeking out his temporary teammates, which would have been good if only he wasn't being so obvious about it. Even more telling, the kid still hadn't noticed Sasuke in the tree by the time he and his sensei reached the field, though the jounin's eyes flicked to his location quickly before he returned them to the genin (the lecture didn't even pause, Sasuke noted).

"…chakra control needs to improve dramatically if you hope to use any medical jutsus! A well-trained medic-nin uses his chakra as a doctor uses his instruments. Your control should be so precise that you can cut as though wielding a scalpel…"

"But Ebisu-sensei," the boy interrupted, turning his head to look back at his teacher, "Shizune-san says that a good medic-nin can also do all those things without chakra, in case there's a situation in which he can't use it."

"That does not mean you should use other means exclusively," the jounin responded, superiority from presumed greater knowledge practically dripping off his tongue. "It is my job as your jounin sensei to ensure you are capable of performing in any and all situations…"

"Someone's coming," the boy said, his head turned to his right. He wiped his nose absent-mindedly on his sleeve, squinting at the figures Sasuke had spotted about twenty seconds before him, while Udon-or-whoever was defending his position on medic-nin practices.

The figures turned out to be two women, or rather, a woman and a girl. The woman Sasuke remembered as the examiner during the second round of the chuunin exam, the one who had cut Naruto's face with a kunai when he'd said something asinine. He couldn't remember her name. The girl, on the other hand, he was pretty sure he'd never seen before, though her eyes made it pretty obvious she was a Hyuuga. She was also looking around her much more obviously than was necessary (especially with her blood-line limit, Sasuke thought disdainfully). She, too, managed to completely miss Sasuke sitting in the tree, though the examiner's eyes zeroed in on him the moment she entered the clearing. She smirked at him and winked (Sasuke raised an eyebrow back, curious despite himself about what she thought was going on), before turning away and hailing the other jounin.

"Ebisu, stop talking the kid's ear off. I could hear you all the way on the other side of the training field."

Ebisu stood up to his full height and glared at the woman. "Anko-san, I think I am perfectly capable of teaching my students on my own."

"Teaching, sure," Anko said, shrugging. "But I'll bet this isn't the first time your brat's heard this speech. Am I right?" she asked, turning to Ebisu's student. Maybe-Udon gave a sheepish grin and nodded slightly, sniffing a little as he did so. Ebisu did not look amused.

"Oh, don't get all uptight," Anko admonished him, laughing. The male jounin scowled a little more, and she sighed. "Fine, fine. We'll start, then. Jeez…" she muttered, rolling her eyes as she walked over to the tree and leaned against the trunk right under where Sasuke sat. "Right, so you're here because…"

"Shouldn't we wait for the third member of the team, Anko-sensei?" the Hyuuga interrupted, raising her eyebrows incredulously. "He should hear this too, right?"

"I'm sure he will," Anko drawled, smirking. Ebisu's eyes flicked to Sasuke again and he frowned slightly, glancing at his apparently completely blind student. "Anyway, you're here because you all don't have teams with whom you can take the chuunin exam. You'll be acting as a three-man unit…"

"If the third member of that unit deigns to show up," muttered the Hyuuga girl disdainfully. The-genin-who-might-be-Udon looked troubled.

"Maybe he got held up somewhere," he defended. "I'm sure there's a reason why he's not here."

"Hmph," said the female genin, crossing her arms, then jumped as a shuriken whirled past her head. She turned and glared at her teacher, who had an unrepentant grin on her face that could cut glass.

"Are you done, Hanabi-chan?" the jounin asked, her voice sickly sweet. "Or do I have to make more of an effort to keep your attention?"

"Sorry, sensei."

"Right then. As I was saying, you will be a temporary three-man team for the entirety of the chuunin exam, and either Ebisu or I will go with you as your jounin representative. We'll talk that out later," she said, addressing Ebisu. The man nodded, and Anko continued. "So, let's get acquainted, shall we? Let's see…" Anko gave that glass-cutter grin again. "How about you give your name, your age, how many times you've taken the chuunin exam, why you are taking it this time, and… when you got here today?" Sasuke rolled his eyes where nobody could see him. As she couldn't see him, Anko took no heed and pointed at let's-call-him-Udon. "You first," she declared imperiously.

The kid stood up a little straighter, pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, and gave a small smile. "I'm Udon," he started. (If Sasuke were anyone else, he would have allowed himself a moment of smugness). "I'm fifteen, and have taken the chuunin exam once before. I'm taking the exam again because I had to bow out last time due to an injury, and I got here at about 7."

"7:02," Ebisu interrupted with a sigh. "Because you were not ready when I came to retrieve you."

"Sorry," Udon said, looking sheepishly at Anko and Hanabi.

Anko waved a hand in a "don't worry about it" gesture. "Now you," she declared, nodding at her student.

"Hyuuga Hanabi. I'm fourteen, and I've never taken the chuunin exam before." She crossed her arms imperiously. "I'm the only member of my team ready to take this exam, and I got here at 7:03."

"Pleased to meet you," Udon said, smiling at her. She looked him up and down, then turned away.

Anko looked supremely unconcerned. "Well, then, that just leaves the last member of the team." She tilted her head up, the angle allowing Sasuke to see the heaven seal on her neck, and smirked. "How about it?"

Sasuke let his mask of indifference fall into place as he jumped down and landed easily in the middle of the little circle. Hanabi stepped back, shocked, and Udon reached for a kunai instinctively even as he blinked in bewilderment. Sasuke turned to Anko. "Uchiha Sasuke. Eighteen in four days. Once. Both my teammates are already chuunin." He glanced at his teammates then, letting his annoyance seep a little into his voice. "7:00 sharp, as ordered."

Hanabi blushed, Udon looked embarrassed and wiped his nose on his sleeve, Ebisu frowned and pushed his glasses up his nose, and Anko cackled. Sasuke sighed inwardly. He had the feeling this was going to be one of those experiences that was better forgotten as soon as possible.

ooo

The day bled into night into another day, and another, and another. Sasuke trained, and watched his temporary teammates train, filing away what information he could on how they thought and fought. It was a way to fill the days, along with a few D-class missions in the evenings, and Sasuke had always found training an easy task to get lost in.

Udon had good reflexes and worked well in tandem with other people, but his abilities were average at best and he seemed to have very little potential as a fighter. He tended to hang back from the main action and use traps and projectile weapons to insure he stayed there. His aim was somewhat less-than-perfect, which made Sasuke question just how well this strategy actually worked.

Apparently, he was also training to be his team's medic-nin, though he was by his own admittance not as good as he could have been. Sasuke was somewhat unsurprised. The boy did claim that his field dressings were killer (horrible choice of wording aside). Sasuke felt he was somewhat justified in being hesitant to test that particular skill.

Hanabi, on the other hand, wasn't bad considering her rank (and the fact that Sasuke was comparing her to what he remembered of Hyuuga Neji). She was quick, and used her family's fighting style fairly well. Unfortunately, she tended to move offensively instead of remaining on the defense and letting her opponents come to her, which was what the style called for. This meant she was usually off-balance and open for the first few seconds while in range of the enemy, a fact that Sasuke doubted an enemy would have any trouble noticing and exploiting. Even worse, Hanabi had a tendency to work independently, a fact that Sasuke suspected was the actual reason her team had not yet attempted to take the chuunin exam. If the girl ran forward and got injured during a fight with nobody to back her up, she would likely die, and Sasuke couldn't imagine the Hyuugas would be happy about such an occurrence.

The senseis took turns overseeing the training, presumably so that their students would have the benefit of mentoring from the jounin with whom they usually worked as well as a jounin with whom they didn't. Personally, Sasuke thought they'd all be better off training alone.

Ebisu seemed to have an opinion on everything, whether or not he knew what he was talking about. Sasuke lost count the first day of how many times the jounin felt the need to stop a spar to correct something either Udon or Hanabi did wrong (not that they didn't need to be corrected, of course, but fifteen minutes on why someone's stance wasn't wide enough was slightly overkill). He didn't correct Sasuke, thankfully. After all, the young man doubted the Council would still allow him to participate in the exam if he had to kill one of his teammate's instructors.

Anko had a different approach. She would stand to the side and watch, sporadically tossing a kunai or jutsu into the mix, though whether this was supposed to be helpful or just annoying Sasuke had yet to figure out. She would also occasionally grin at the three of them as though she thought they were the sweetest bunch of fangless vipers she'd ever seen, and sometimes would accompany this look with a wise-crack about something stupid someone had done, both of which Sasuke was pretty sure were merely meant to be annoying.

For his part, Sasuke showed his teammates just enough for them to figure out when to stay the hell out of his way. He didn't have time to be a teacher and was used to hiding the full extent of his abilities anyway. Besides, the two genin probably wouldn't find the information very useful. From what Sasuke could tell they were just settling into styles of their own and wouldn't be able to modify them very much to accommodate a teammate much faster and stronger than them.

By the third night, Sasuke was internally debating the merits of knocking them out and throwing them in a shoulder sack for the entirety of the second round. It would probably be much easier on everyone.

ooo

Sasuke was in the shower when he felt the newly-set proximity jutsu go off. He'd set it up the first day he'd met with his new team, deciding that not knowing when someone was coming onto his property, mentally and physically exhausted or not, was inexcusable. _Good thing I did, too_, he thought grimly, as he felt the foreign chakra brush against his own and get closer. _I wouldn't have had time to dry off otherwise_.

As it was, by the time Kakashi had let himself in through Sasuke's window, the owner of the house was in the kitchen, towel wrapped firmly around his waist and hair dripping soap, armed with a handful of shuriken, his unsheathed sword, and a severely tried temper. When he saw who it was, he considered attacking anyway.

His decision not to was strained near to breaking when Kakashi did nothing but smile serenely in the face of Sasuke's emanating killing intent. Silence reigned for a total of four minutes and forty-two seconds.

Finally, Sasuke decided Kakashi wasn't going to explain himself without prompting, and loosened his clenched jaw enough to speak. "What do you _want_?" he asked, each syllable frosted with as much ice as he could pack onto it.

"Do I need to want something to visit my former student?" Kakashi asked mildly. Sasuke threw a shuriken, which was dodged with expected ease. Kakashi raised his hands in the universal 'I surrender' gesture. "Now, now, I come in peace." Sasuke aimed another shuriken. "I just came to take you out to dinner," Kakashi told him hastily. Sasuke paused and raised an eyebrow. "…Or rather, take you out to a birthday dinner," Kakashi clarified, reaching a hand up to rub the back of his neck.

"…_Che_," Sasuke said, disgusted, and lowered his hand. "How did you know it was my birthday, anyway?" Sasuke certainly hadn't told him. He hadn't seen Kakashi since Naruto was in the hospital, in fact, and hadn't thought of his birthday himself all day. Well, he'd thought "Oh, I'm eighteen now, aren't I?" in between bites of warmed-up miso soup this morning, but that hardly counted.

Kakashi was speaking again. "I got your file when I accepted you as a member of my genin team," he explained, shoving his hands in his pockets and leaning back against the sill of the open window. Sasuke raised the eyebrow again and gave his former sensei his best incredulous look. The Kakashi he remembered wouldn't have _read_ those files, let alone remembered a date on them. "…And I heard Anko talking about your first meeting with Udon and Hanabi," Kakashi conceded. Sasuke snorted. That figured…

There was silence for another few moments, in which the two shinobi just looked at each other. Finally, Kakashi shrugged. "We can go after you finish your shower," he offered in a tone that sounded like the love-child of magnanimous and patronizing. Sasuke glared, and tossed another shuriken (which Kakashi dodged) and stormed back to his still-running shower, Kakashi's parting "don't forget to wash behind your ears," following him down the hallway.

ooo

They ended up going for barbeque, though how Sasuke couldn't be sure. One moment he'd finished his shower and had gone back to the kitchen, fully intending to kick Kakashi out and then eat the fish in his refrigerator for dinner, the next he was vetoing Ichiraku Ramen (one of the many places Kakashi suggested, all of which apparently came from the jounin's extensive list of 'restaurants that offer take-out'). Before he knew it, he was sitting in a booth across from Kakashi, feeling insanely awkward and annoyed about it. He would have taken this temper out on Kakashi, except the older man was reading some book from the _Icha Icha_ series and ignoring everything else, coward that he was. Sasuke was forced to settle on looking as apathetic as possible and taking his frustration out on the piece of beef in front of him.

Somehow, vigorous chewing didn't seem to be getting his mood across the way he would have liked.

Predictably, the meal continued in silence. Sasuke ate his damned barbeque, and watched with reluctant interest born of extreme boredom as Kakashi's food disappeared piece by piece behind the book. The waitress came over once, but left as quickly as possible once Sasuke gave her a look that compared her to a maggot, were one to discover a maggot in one's refrigerator. He decided that the meal was over when he found himself almost wishing she'd had more of a backbone, if only so that she'd come over every once in a while and break up the monotony.

It was dark when Sasuke finally got back to his house, Kakashi following silently. The night was overcast, depriving the two people walking through the dead Uchiha district of even the moon by which to see. Not that either shinobi needed light to know where he was going, of course.

Kakashi looked completely at ease as usual, from what Sasuke could tell in the dark. His hands were in his pockets, book temporarily in the kunai holder at his hip. Standing at the front door to his home and looking at his silent companion, Sasuke wondered if his mother's ghost would forgive him if he just went inside and closed the door in Kakashi's face.

"The Hokage received a message from Sakura today," Kakashi declared suddenly, as though this were part of a conversation they'd been having. Sasuke raised an eyebrow at his former teacher, the action lost in the nearly complete darkness of the silent Uchiha complex. Kakashi continued as though Sasuke had responded in a way he could actually know about. "She was delayed a few days with one of the cases, but she should be back tomorrow."

"…Hn," Sasuke said, wondering why Kakashi thought he'd care that Sakura was four days late in returning. He wished it were a little lighter, suddenly, so that he could see the other man better and possible gather some clues about what he was thinking from body language. Not that Kakashi's body language ever showed him as anything but slightly bored. Bastard…

"…Would you like some tea?" he finally asked, manners getting the better of his wish to be done with this encounter as soon as possible. Kakashi shook his head.

"No, but thank you for the offer," he returned solicitously. Sasuke took this to mean his duties as a host were finished, and opened his door. He was halfway through it before Kakashi spoke again.

"Sasuke." And Sasuke turned his head just enough to look over his shoulder, wondering what _else_ the jounin could possibly want. Somehow, even though he could barely make out the man's silhouette, he knew he was smiling brightly. "If you ever need anything, let me know." Sasuke blinked, completely surprised, and opened his mouth to respond, but Kakashi was already walking away. Sasuke could just make out the hand raised in fairwell. He frowned at Kakashi's retreating back before going inside and shutting the door firmly behind him.

ooo

There was a time, Sasuke knew, when he could have become close to Kakashi. Or at least, he could have become as close to Kakashi as Kakashi ever let anyone. They were similar in a lot of ways, some of the most important being the sharingan and a mutual understanding of loss. Before he'd left, Sasuke had wondered, way in the back of his mind where he rarely ever looked, if perhaps that understanding could grow into something a little deeper than a teacher-student bond.

It couldn't now, of course. Sasuke had severed that bond along with all his others when he left the village, and Kakashi wasn't the sort to pursue something long dead and buried. The man hadn't even come after Sasuke when he'd left, proving that of all the members of team 7, Kakashi was definitely the most intelligent. He knew when he was looking at a losing battle.

Still, that night, as Sasuke lay in bed and tried in vain to shut his brain off long enough to fall asleep, he wondered for the first time in a long time what would have happened if he hadn't so definitively broken his bond with Kakashi. Oh, he didn't expect they'd have the type of relationship that Naruto and Iruka had, of course. Neither of them were quite open enough for that. But… maybe… maybe Kakashi wouldn't only appear every few months, when circumstances made it nearly inevitable. Maybe they'd have had something to say to each other at dinner that night.

He wondered why Kakashi had offered his help, should Sasuke ever need it. They were hardly close, and never had been, after all. Sasuke didn't need a teacher any more, and even if he did, that teacher wouldn't be Kakashi.

His last thought before falling asleep was that maybe he'd find out when Kakashi's birthday was, just in case…

ooo

AN: Look! I'm alive! –waves–

Sorry this took so long to get out, folks. Let's just say I'm dropping econ and leave it at that, all right? Next chapter's in motion, so it shouldn't be as long to wait. I hope… Well, check my bio as usual.

Thanks to everyone who reviewed!

Daikirei: –blushes– Thank you! I'm so glad you're enjoying the story. Hope this chapter measured up…

Boshoku: –laughs– Indeed it is. Hopefully, having been trained by Ebisu and Anko, they'll be a bit more resilient…

Sszw85: I'm glad you're enjoying! Yes, Lee will appear sometime in the near future. Unfortunately, he's not someone Sasuke usually interacts with, so I needed a specific set of events for him to make it into the plot. But he's coming!

Dragon77: –hangs head in shame– Sorry this took so long! I hope you enjoyed anyway!

MadaMag: –grin– I'm glad you're enjoying. Can't really answer your questions, though. That would be spoiling, and I really can't do that. Guess you'll just have to wait and see what happens… –innocent whistling–

Jade: –hug– for my wonderful beta. Give her a round of applause, everyone! Without her, this likely wouldn't make any sense at all!

Right. That's it, I think. If I missed anyone, I'm really sorry! I got a lot of reviews this time around (or at least, a lot for me…) Until next time, everyone!


	10. Chapter 10

Chapter 10

Sasuke was scheduled to leave for Grass with Udon and Hanabi ten days after his birthday, which would give them about two days after arriving to get settled before the exam. It would be the first time in five months that he had left the village since returning from his absence. He felt like he should be looking forward to it more, and might have, had circumstances not conspired to make sure he was as stressed as possible at all times.

Sakura returned on the ninth day before Sasuke left, though she did so late enough that he didn't actually see her until she woke him up with breakfast on the eighth. She walked in as though she'd never been away, demanded to know what he'd done to his hands (he didn't tell her, obviously), fed him, and then departed with the promise that she'd see him later for dinner. Sasuke had a moment in which he debated being annoyed on principal that she assumed he couldn't feed himself, but the (admittedly rather small) part of him that was nothing more than an eighteen-year-old decided it would be stupid to turn down free food and he left it alone.

Six days before leaving, Sasuke made a list of all the items he'd need for a month-long stay in another ninja village, then meticulously packed everything but the clothing, as he'd obviously need that in the days leading up to departure as well. Then he unpacked and repacked everything with the weapons easily accessible at the top. Then he thought about how Hanabi was still regularly leaving herself open during sparring and replaced some of the rations he'd packed with more medical supplies. Then he decided that Udon, as a medic-nin, should be responsible for worrying about idiot fourteen-year-olds with faulty guards and switched them back again.

He walked away when he caught himself wondering if he should pack the old scroll that described all the Uchiha fire jutsus, just to be safe.

Four days before departure, the senseis announced that Anko would be coming with them, Hanabi was still fighting in a way that would get her killed within five minutes of encountering a real opponent, and Udon had actually managed to become _less_ accurate when throwing kunai. Sasuke was pretty sure he was developing a migraine. Or a tic, it was hard to say.

Three days before Sasuke left, Naruto was due to return from his mission. He failed to do so, though overall that was pretty normal for the type of mission he was on. Sasuke mentally shrugged and shoved that train of thought behind the much more pressing concern of how he was going to get through five days of his jounin representative's constant company without resorting to homicide.

Two days before leaving for the exam, Sakura didn't show up with breakfast. Sasuke gave up waiting for her fifteen minutes prior to when he was due on the training field, annoyed but figuring she'd been called in to work on some serious injury or other and hadn't had time to send a note. It had happened a few times during the months he'd been under house arrest, and she always turned up for dinner.

She didn't turn up for dinner, either.

ooo

Sakura eventually did show up, three hours, nineteen minutes and nine seconds after she usually did at seven-thirty. Sasuke knew this because he spent most of the time sitting at his kitchen table, glaring at the clock and letting the fuse on his temper burn lower and lower with each passing minute. Not that he'd ever admit this to anyone.

He sensed her chakra even before she crossed over the proximity alarm, and slid the door open as she was raising her fist to knock. There was a moment when the light from his hallway threw her into sharp relief and he paused, taking in the bags under her eyes, her clenched jaw, her tense stance. It only lasted a moment, though.

He considered saying something about how he'd started letting her bring him meals at her own insistence, but in the end just turned away from her and walked back into the kitchen to warm up the now ice-cold tea on the burner. Sakura followed a moment later, and the silence stretched out between them to fill even the corners of the room with an awkward tension.

It was broken a few minutes later when his stomach rumbled loudly. He ignored it. Behind him, Sakura sighed. "I'm sorry," she mumbled. "I should have sent a note to let you know you'd need to pick something up to eat."

"Hn," Sasuke responded, turning off the burner on the now-whistling kettle and took out two mugs for the tea. He waited for her to say something more, but she didn't, and the silence stretched out between them again. Sasuke ignored that, too, and brought the tea to the table. Sakura accepted her mug with a smile.

"Thank you," she said. Sasuke took a sip from his own mug instead of responding. It wasn't as though he wouldn't do the same for any guest in his home. Besides, she looked like she could use the caffeine. Her eyes lingered on him for a minute, and her mouth opened, as though she would continue speaking, but instead she just took a sip of her own.

Then she set the mug down with a huff. "You aren't going to make this easy for me, are you?" she asked, annoyance and amusement warring with the weariness in her voice. Sasuke set his own mug down, raising an eyebrow as he did so. He hadn't been aware of the fact that he was being difficult. Sakura hardly needed his permission to talk, after all.

"Make what easy?" he asked, figuring he might as well give her the prod she needed to say whatever she wanted to say.

Sakura opened her mouth again, then closed it, hesitating. Finally she huffed again. "I don't know why this is so difficult. I do it more often than I'd like, really. All right, I'll be blunt about it." She looked him squarely in the eye. "Naruto's back. He's in the hospital, in intensive care. That's why I couldn't make it until just now."

The world froze, rewound a bit, and then started replaying more slowly. Sasuke blinked. Well. He hadn't been expecting _that_.

"It was supposed to be an easy mission," Sasuke pointed out, frowning as he set his own mug down and turned his full attention to the woman in front of him.

Sakura sighed, and leaned forward in her chair in a way that reminded Sasuke of the Hokage as she briefed someone on a situation. "It was supposed to be," she responded. "We don't know what happened. Well, obviously, since he was nearly unconscious when he got in last night." She reached up and rubbed her temples, as though warding off a headache, then laced both hands together and met his eyes again. "It looks like he used rasen-shuriken."

_He used what?_ Sasuke thought, inwardly frowning. "I've never heard of that," he said aloud, letting his face smooth into indifference rather than confusion.

Sakura looked equal parts exasperated at Naruto and tired. "Well, I suppose it's good to know he listens to _some_ of what I tell him," she muttered. "Rasen-shuriken is a technique he created when he was fifteen. It's the completed form of the rasengan, adding the element wind to the pre-existing chakra element. It works by attacking all the cells with which it comes in contact with microscopic wind blades, thus killing them." Sasuke raised an eyebrow, actually a little impressed. Not that Naruto needed to know, of course, but still.

Sakura did not seem to be similarly impressed. She scowled as she continued. "The problem is that it is still held in Naruto's hand, so every time he uses it he kills all the cells from fingertip to elbow in that arm." She used her left hand to gesture on her right, showing Sasuke the full extent of the damage. "Last time he used it, the chain reaction it created meant he couldn't _move_ from a hospital bed for a month."

"…_Che_. Moron," Sasuke said, turning away from her. What kind of idiot has a jutsu in his arsenal that severely injures him every time he uses it, when he _knows_ that he has a terminal condition that worsens with injury?

"Mm," Sakura agreed, taking a sip of tea. "I told him to stop using it. He has, for the most part. He usually has a _really_ good reason for pulling it out of his metaphorical bag of tricks." Her lips thinned. "I'm kind of looking forward to the explanation, to be honest."

Sasuke couldn't help smirking a little at that, even as he kept his head turned away from her so she wouldn't see him do it. Knowing Naruto, it'd at least be a story worth hearing.

ooo

Sasuke eyed his opponents across the field, his weight balanced on the front of his feet and arms relaxed at his sides, giving away nothing about his next moves. Twenty-three paces at his 10 o'clock, Hanabi stood in a Gentle Fist fighting stance, hair pulled back into a messy pony-tail, strands sticking to her face from sweat. Seventeen paces to her right, Udon was breathing heavily where he crouched (a tactical mistake, it was easier to throw him off-balance), a kunai held too tightly in each hand and a large bruise beginning to discolor on his right cheek. He absently reached up to wipe under his nose, and Sasuke let a small part of his mind list all the ways that left him open, and how one would take advantage of them.

"Okay," Anko called from her seemingly very comfortable position under the maple, nine paces to Sasuke's immediate left. "Again. Three-way spar to pin or first blood. On my mark…" The two younger genin tensed, and Sasuke resisted the very real urge to call out exactly what direction they were likely to jump. "Three, two, one…" Anko popped a dango into her mouth and chewed happily.

"Sensei!" Hanabi snapped, obviously exasperated. Anko smirked around the dango stick, and took her time taking the damn thing out of her mouth. She twirled it in her fingers, watching as it spun a little jerkily.

"Mark," she called without warning.

Udon was actually the first to move this time. He threw both kunai, one at either opponent, and then leapt backwards in an attempt to put some more distance between them. It wouldn't have worked if Sasuke had been paying more attention to him, but the throw wasn't bad. Hanabi dodged it with ease, of course, but it served to throw off her stride during an otherwise reckless frontal attack on Sasuke. Sasuke, on the other hand, didn't bother to dodge. He snatched the weapon out of the air and tossed it in the direction of Hanabi's weak point in her defense. Hanabi dodged again, but barely.

Hyuuga were graceful, on a whole, and Hanabi was no exception. She'd moved out of the line of the kunai as though it were part of a well-choreographed dance, and was again trying to close the distance between herself and her chosen target seconds later. Apparently, she still hadn't taken what Sasuke considered a rather blatant hint that she was leaving herself vulnerable.

He waited until she was within arm-length before planting his foot directly in her side. He added a little chakra to the hit, too. He figured if being flung halfway across a training field didn't make the hint sink in, nothing would.

Hanabi hit the ground on her back and rolled, using her momentum to get to her feet again just in time for Sasuke to reach her landing place. He used his sword sheath to hook her legs before she managed to get into a good stance, sending her backwards towards the ground again. He'd found that the best way to counter-act Hanabi's ability to cut off chakra pathways was to keep her hands busy lessening the impact of a fall, though it didn't hurt that knocking her down was also rather satisfying.

She twisted so that most of her weight was balanced on her arms in a partial hand-stand, and then levered herself up into a double kick towards Sasuke's stomach. He side-stepped, and twisted to block the first hand-strike of the match with the still-sheathed sword. He caught the other arm around her wrist as she went for his shoulder and pinched a nerve cluster until she winced, then kicked her again directly in the stomach, effectively winding her. Then, he dropped her face-first onto the ground and placed the now unsheathed blade at the back of her throat.

"Does this count as a pin, or should I draw blood?" he called to Anko. The jounin looked up from her lunch as though she hadn't been keeping a close eye on the match. "You're done for now, Hanabi." The younger kunoichi humphed, but stayed down.

"I was _going_ to throw a shuriken at his eyes," she informed her sensei, as though this would somehow counteract the fact that she was on her stomach with naked steel at her neck. Sasuke snorted and raised his sword so that she could get up…

… and sidestepped as the kunai Udon had been holding for the past five minutes finally flew past his ear. He turned and faced his second opponent.

True to form, Udon had stayed away from the fighting as much as possible. He'd backed up as Hanabi's impromptu trip across the training field had drawn the action a little closer, and was now in what would normally be a strategically sound position in the branches above Anko's head. Too bad he'd just given away the exact position, Sasuke thought to himself, inwardly smirking. He tilted the sword just enough to send a glare directly at the other genin's eyes, in such a way that his glasses would be more hindrance than help. Then he moved.

A quick dash up the trunk, a swing onto the branch behind Udon and a swift cut through the wood later, and Udon was in a heap on the ground with a tree branch pinning him there. The whole process took about four seconds.

"Match goes to Uchiha," Anko declared with roll of her eyes. "I'm sure nobody saw that coming…"

Sasuke snorted contemptuously, then jumped down. That had been extraordinarily simple. He landed easily a foot from where Udon was struggling his way out from under the branch. Anko eyed him uninterestedly. "There a reason you're beating the shit out of them today, or are your feathers all a-fluff for no reason?" she asked Sasuke. He shot her a glare that could freeze boiling lava, which earned him an obnoxious smirk and little else. "Fine, don't tell me." She gestured Hanabi over and waited for Udon to finish dusting himself off before continuing. "Lunch break," she declared. "You kiddies get twenty minutes."

"Finally," Hanabi snapped, pushing sweaty, dirty hair out of her eyes irritably and turning her back on the party as she headed to her pack. Udon plopped down where he stood and stretched out, groaning like he'd just been used as a punching bag. The fact that this wasn't too far from the mark was inconsequential. Sasuke turned to get his pack, too, but Anko's voice stopped him.

"Hold it, Uchiha. I want a word with you." He turned back and raised an eyebrow. "Yeah," she said, as though he'd asked a question. "You." She stood up and stretched, then started walking off towards the edge of the training ground. "Walk with me." Wondering irritably if she was going to push the 'more grumpy than usual' question, Sasuke followed.

The truth was, he _was_ feeling out-of-sorts, though he really couldn't pin down why. He'd had trouble getting to sleep the night before once Sakura left, but it wasn't lack of sleep that had him on edge now. He felt uncomfortable in his skin, and there was something nagging at the back of his mind that he couldn't quite pin down. It made everything seem even _more_ annoying than it usually was, and as a result he may have been a little harder on his temporary teammates than was strictly necessary. He didn't see what the big deal about that was, truthfully. They were ninja. They should be able to take a few hits.

Anko strolled along, not looking at him, hands in the pockets of her coat. She was whistling something Sasuke didn't recognize, though that may have had something to do with the fact that the whistling was disgustingly off-key. Sasuke, who was making a conscious effort to not show how annoyed he was getting with every passing moment, matched her step for step and didn't attempt to shut her up. He felt she should be grateful for his restraint. After all, it was hardly polite to ignore the person whose time you were taking up for some presumed desperate need to converse. He wondered if he was supposed to make the first overture at…

He dropped, letting the snakes fly right through the area where his head used to be, sharingan spinning in his eyes. He drew his sword and arced it directly at Anko's legs in a counter attack that would cut them clean through at the knee. Anko jumped before the hit landed, did a neat summersault in the air, and landed behind him out of immediate striking range. Sasuke rose and whirled to face her as she landed, sword at the ready. Anko had drawn kunai while still in the air, three for each hand. The younger ninja wasn't surprised to see that she was grinning. "So," she said casually, as though she wasn't poised to take Sasuke's head off. "You're good enough to counter a jounin with no warning and no killing intent." She relaxed and let her arms drop, sheathing the kunai again in a show of truce and leaving Sasuke blinking a little as he realized that there really was no killing intent coming from his opponent. "That's good. It's the type of skill that takes years of back-breaking work to cultivate." She gestured over her shoulder at where the other two genin were just now realizing something was going on between Sasuke and Anko. "They aren't that good," she said unnecessarily.

"Che," Sasuke responded, standing up and sheathing his sword, but keeping sharingan activated.

Anko raised an eyebrow. "But then again, they don't have to be that good, Uchiha. They're _genin_. Genin who are ready to be chuunin, but genin either way. Hanabi's about the level you were at when you entered your first chuunin exam." She stretched. "You were lauded as a genius, if I remember correctly."

"What's your point?" Sasuke asked bluntly.

Anko gave him a look. "My point is that you should lay off them. They're not terrible. They just don't meet your ridiculously high standards, because they don't have the training and experience you had." Sasuke raised an eyebrow. Anko raised one back. "Hanabi's my student, or I wouldn't be saying anything at all. Just… they're only kids. Don't expect miracles."

"Can I go now?" Sasuke asked, letting some of his annoyance bleed into his voice. It earned him a grin from Anko that could have cut glass.

"Hold your horses. You don't have anywhere to be," she said. "Just one more thing. You," she pointed at Sasuke, "are the senior member of this team. During the exam, you will be the one with the experience, and the responsibility to get all three of you out of there alive. I," here she gestured to herself, "am going strictly as your jounin representative. That means I make sure you get there on time, and then sign you in at that door. I'm not going as a sensei." She paused, the grin still in place. "Do ya know what that means, Uchiha?" Sasuke didn't lower himself to answer, not that she expected him to. "It _means_ that if you want them to fix something, you'll have to teach them yourself. I'm not gonna do it for you." Sasuke clenched his fists, even as he kept any reaction to the words out of his face and shoulders. Anko's eyes flicked to his hands, one of which was still bandaged pretty tightly to support the healing fracture, and her grin widened. She turned and started walking away.

"You now have ten minutes to eat," she called over her shoulder. Sasuke pulled out a kunai, but managed to stop himself before he threw it. From the fucking cackle Anko gave, she noticed anyway.

ooo

_Discarded notes from the waste-basket of Uchiha Sasuke:_

Naruto,

This is for whenever you wake up from your coma.

--

Naruto,

Words cannot express how fucking stupid you are.

--

Idiot,

What kind of loser uses a jutsu that kills all the cells in his arm?

--

Naruto,

When you get this, I'll probably still be in Grass, since the Council decided I could go to the chuunin exam. You wouldn't know this, because you went into a coma before I could tell you.

--

Moron,

You better fucking appreciate what I'm going through to make sure you have a team for the jounin exam. Do you have any idea how fucking weak genin are?

One comment about me being a genin and I'll track you down and kill you myself.

--

Asshole,

When I get back from Grass, you better have a really good reason why you used a jutsu that you know escalates your condition. I'm aware that you're mentally challenged, but I didn't

--

Naruto,

I couldn't come to visit you in the hospital. Not that it would have mattered because you were in a coma. Anyway, I needed to go to the chuunin exam. For you, by the way. You better be grateful.

--

Naruto,

Why am I even trying to write you a note, anyway? I don't have to explain myself to you. I'm not your keeper. If you want to kill yourself before becoming Hokage, go right ahead. It's not like I (remaining words blacked out)

--

Naruto,

You better fucking be awake when I get back, or you can fucking take the jounin exam on your own. I have no intention of wasting my time on reckless idiots.

--

Dead last,

Can't you even deliver a message correctly? Are you a special brand of idiot here-to-fore undiscovered or something?

--

**…I DON'T FUCKING KNOW WHAT TO WRITE**

ooo

_A note found on the side-table of Uzumaki Naruto's hospital bed:_

Moron.

ooo

_A message sent to Uchiha Sasuke by carrier bird from Konohagakure, received just before the third round of the chuunin exam:_

Bastard.

ooo

AN: –boggles– Oh my god, it's done! I'm so sorry it took so long to finish, people! I'm smack dab in the middle of a semester of college right now, so time is scarce. –sheepish– Thanks for sticking with me!

Dragon77: Gah! Sorry it took so long, sweets! Hopefully it was worth the wait?

Ness: –glomp– You read it! Yay!

Boshoku: It is indeed… I'm glad you liked, love! Hopefully, you'll this chapter was worth the wait!

Dragon695: I agree with you. If a main character is going to die in the body of a story, there should be a warning. As of now, however, this is not a death fic, which is why it isn't labeled as one. Also, I refer to _Best Days_ as a long-term illness fic mainly because, in this universe, Naruto has actually had the condition since the day he was born. It just wasn't discovered until he was fifteen. Perhaps a better description would be 'terminal illness'? As for kyuubi, you're absolutely right. It would be a good idea to, at the very least, tell him to bloody stop healing the boy so quickly. Unfortunately, while looking through canon, I didn't see any indication of Naruto mentioning that he holds conversations with Kyuubi, so none of the people who could have this idea know it's even possible. Well, except for Naruto, but he can really only enter that cavern when he's unconscious, and he's only unconscious when the damage has pretty much been done, so it hasn't occurred to him to try.

Right! I think that's everyone. Hope you all enjoy! I'll try to have the next chapter out much sooner than this one. Look at my bio for weekly updates on whether or not something's up!


	11. Chapter 11

Chapter 11

There was a convenient little clearing in the woods that surrounded the road leading into Earth Country. It had originally been created many years ago by a very tired team of Grass shinobi who, while making their way to Konoha, had stopped to rest for the night. Since then, the clearing had been used for various and sundry purposes, as it was a pretty handy nook in an otherwise dense forest, and any ninja would agree that it beat camping out in the open on the road or trying to get some shut-eye in a tree.

On this particular night the air was unpleasantly cold and damp, with mist curving around tree trunks and threading through branches and underbrush under the canopy. It was the type of mist that was just dense enough to obscure one's vision, but not so dense that it wouldn't burn off the moment the sun rose the next day. The various and sundry forest life noted it only as an inconvenience if they noticed at all, stopping periodically in their never-ending scavenging to shake off the dew condensing on fur.

One of these, a hare, bravely inched its way from the underbrush towards what it couldn't possibly know were the expertly-doused remains of a small cooking fire, hoping that there might be something interesting to eat there between these large animals with strange flat furs. There wasn't, of course, and it reluctantly made its way around one of the sleeping animals and back towards the safety of the underbrush.

It was almost there when something whooshed past its head and buried itself in a tree trunk not three hops away from it. With an almighty shriek, the hare lunged backwards and through the camp, barreling over one of the animals, who happened to go by the name of Hanabi. She started and lurched up, reflexively reaching for her weapons and activating byakugan as the hare ran over her before passing a now upright Uchiha Sasuke and disappearing into the undergrowth next to Udon, who had been lightly dozing as he took his shift as guard. Sasuke stared after it, forcibly slowing his breathing down to normal levels and unclenching his hand around a second kunai.

Hanabi began to get up as slowly and cautiously as possible. "What was that?" she asked carefully, as though speaking too loudly would make something vital shatter and bring the sky down around their ears. "I don't see any threats." Sasuke scrubbed at his face with one hand as discretely as possible, then got up to get his kunai.

"Nothing," he told her. "A hare. Go back to sleep." Hanabi narrowed her eyes at him, clearly wondering why a hare would panic and run through their camp for no reason, and opened her mouth to respond, but was interrupted when Anko, who was sitting up to Sasuke's left, snorted and lay back down.

"Shut up and go to sleep. Both of you. Some of us need our beauty rest." She lifted her head and gave Sasuke a very pointed look, then lay back down smirking. Sasuke manfully ignored the insinuation that he was pretty. Hanabi, on the other hand, gave him a suspicious look, but in the end she huffed and rolled over. Sasuke was strangely grateful, really. He didn't want to have to explain why he was throwing kunai in the general direction of innocent hares in his sleep.

_The nightmares are happening more and more frequently_, Sasuke thought, frowning to himself as he stood up and made his way carefully through the camp, making sure to make just enough noise to assure his sleeping teammates (well, sleeping jounin escort) that he wasn't sneaking around. Nightmares about the massacre, nightmares about Itachi, nightmares about mangekyou, or being trapped and blind and running out of air, or being surrounded on all sides by hands that threatened to rip him to shreds… an involuntary shiver clawed its way up his spine and settled somewhere in his throat. He irritably gave himself a mental shake and swallowed it back down again. This wasn't the time to fall to pieces again. He needed to thoroughly entertain the examiners in a few days, preferably enough that they stopped looking at the two other genin on his team, and this could easily hinder his ability to do so. He had two options, then: he could either actually try to work through the mess that currently was his head, or he could simply build a wall high enough to hopefully last until the exam was over. The first option would definitely take too long, since they were over halfway to Grass at this point, which left the second choice. Sasuke wasn't sure he liked that alternative much either, since mental walls had a tendency to crumble at horribly inconvenient times and leave a person in a state better left uncontemplated, but they were quick, and much easier to create, and damn it, he didn't really _want_ to purposely dredge up his worst memories. He wasn't particularly into mental agony.

Maybe he cared too much about all of this.

Udon met him at the underbrush into which he'd thrown his kunai, a look between uncomfortable and worried etched on his face. Sasuke made sure his face betrayed nothing even as he braced himself for the boy's misguided attempt to butt into other people's business. Sometimes he really thought he liked Hanabi better than Udon. She at least knew where she wasn't wanted…

"Are you alright, Sasuke-san?" Udon whispered. "You haven't thrown anything in your sleep before."

"Hn," Sasuke responded noncommittally, looking away to search for his kunai. Maybe if he was uninterested and monosyllabic enough the brat would go away.

"Was… was it a particularly bad nightmare?" Udon asked. "Do you need someone to talk to about it?" Sasuke clenched his teeth and didn't answer through an extreme exertion of will. Who did this kid think he was, anyway? Sasuke had hardly presented himself as willing to discuss his private thoughts with someone half his mental age. Like hell he was going to confide in him.

Besides, the nightmares would go away as soon as he had something to occupy himself other than his own thoughts, which should happen roughly when they stopped filling their days with traveling and began the exam.

"Go to sleep," he ordered Udon, straightening and holstering his kunai. "I'll take the rest of your watch." Udon looked away and swiped at his nose absentmindedly.

"Maybe you should instead. You've only gotten a few hours tonight, and not that much last night either…" Sasuke's eye ticked.

"I'm well aware," he snapped, his voice as quiet as he could make it. "_I_ am perfectly capable of functioning on only a few hours' sleep. You, on the other hand, can't keep watch for longer than ten minutes without drifting off."

Udon's blush was visible even in the dark. "It's the first time I've done that in ages." Still, he acquiesced and went to his bed roll anyway, looking horribly guilty about it as he did so. Sasuke ruthlessly squashed the little voice in his head complaining that the kid was only trying to help (it sounded more and more like Naruto all the time, damn it), and went to take up position for watch. It was only an hour until Hanabi's shift anyway. He'd go back to sleep then.

He still hadn't five hours later, when the sun rose.

OOO

It would come as a surprise to most people to learn that Uchiha Sasuke was not, by nature, a morning person. He vaguely remembered a time, before circumstances conspired to make sleeping deeply a rather bad idea, when he would wake up after the sun and stay happily in bed until his mother came into his room and gently informed him that the day was starting without him. Of course, a great deal of time had passed between then and now, and Sasuke had since trained himself not only to wake up immediately and completely as soon as there was some disturbance, but to function on as little as an hour of sleep a night for about a week.

There was, naturally, a difference between being _able_ to function at full capacity on little sleep, and actually _enjoying _it.

This may have contributed to the overwhelmingly obvious fact that Sasuke was in a bad mood the day after he startled a hare into barreling through their camp in a panic...

"Uchiha!" Anko snapped as Sasuke pulled ahead of their group again and settled into something slightly faster than the pace they'd been maintaining (which, he was sure, would have been about equivalent to that of a snail). "For the last time, slow the hell down and wait for your team or so help me, Ill break one of your ankles and _force_ you to _hobble_ at _my_ pace!" Sasuke ground his teeth together in indignation. This was ridiculous. He moved faster because he was _taller_ and had a _longer reach_. He didn't see why he had to practically crawl along because the two _children_ at his back couldn't keep up with him. He stopped and waited for them on the branch of a big oak, making sure his body language portrayed exactly what he throught of this whole 'waiting' business. At this rate, they'd be lucky if they every reached Grass at all.

Hanabi gave him a disdainful look as she reached him, as though he was somehow at fault for moving more quickly than her. He wasn't particularly interested in joining the others while they stopped to admire the scenery during their leisurely stroll to Grass village. He raised an eyebrow back, daring her to actually call him on it. She didn't, of course; she was _above_ such petty squabbles. Instead she turned and continued past him, as though he was simply below her notice.

Sasuke was surpised she hadn't taken the bait, until he realized he wanted her to react like Naruto. He felt a sudden pang of something dangerously close to nostalgia for teams past, and crushed it ruthlessly by speeding up again and making a point to pass so close to Hanabi that he forced her off-balance. He noted, with some satisfaction, that she had to add quite a bit more chakra to her next landing in order to stick.

"Uchiha, how old are you?" Anko shouted after him, as Udon called out "are you alright, Hanabi?" and the girl in question stopped to further stabilize herself. Sasuke stopped as well, turned and met her dirty glare with a blank stare of his own.

"I'm fine," Hanabi called back. "Sasuke-_san_ was simply showing me how difficult he finds it to stay with a group."

Sasuke who was honestly surprised at all the possible insinuations in that sentence, let his eyes narrow. "I am perfectly capable of staying with a group," he informed her, "so long as the people in it are competent." The voice that sounded a little like Naruto and a little like his conscience was calling him a bastard and demanding to know what he was doing, baiting her like that? He ignored it with the ease of long practice. Hyuuga Hanabi had had a problem with him from the start, and this was as good a time as any to force it out of her. In fact, he'd prefer to do this now instead of waiting and having it come to a head during the chuunin exam, when he'd be depending on her to do her part to get herself and Udon through the tests.

Plus, he was tired, and had been ridiculously wound up since before starting out on this god-damned trip, and if something didn't change soon, he was going to _snap_.

Hanabi bristled at the implication that she was below standards, and Sasuke allowed himself a moment of satisfaction for getting to her. The feeling quickly dissipated with the girl's next words. "What people would these be?" she asked. "The ones you left behind when you abandoned the village?"

That was a two-way insult. The first, and most obvious part, was the open accusation that he was a traitor to the village, which was true and by itself wouldn't have set him off. The second, more subtle insinuation, was that by leaving team seven he had been declaring them incompetent, which stung mostly because at the time he had partially believed it true, and had partially been reeling from the realization that it no longer was, completely.

This pint-sized genin didn't know a thing about his team.

"Leave them out of this," he said levelly. "They have nothing to do with our conversation."

"Oh, but _you _brought them into it. Besides," Hanabi responded snidely, pressing her advantage. "I'd say they have a lot to do with this conversation. After all, they're both chuunin now, and _you_ are stuck taking the exam with _us_. Logically, that would make _you_ the incompetent, wouldn't it Uchiha? They didn't have a problem making chuunin once you _left_."

It took about a quarter of a second to bridge the gap between himself and Hanabi, and less time than that to catch her by the throat with his right hand and slam her hard into the tree trunk behind her. The effort of will it took not to kill her for those insults was monumental. If he didn't _need_ her for the exam…

"Tell me, Hanabi-_chan_," he said levelly, "do you need your _tongue_ for any of your techniques?" As though in answer, Hanabi jabbed him in a pressure point that caused his entire arm to go numb. He dropped her as his fingers lost feeling, then shifted his weight and kneed her under the chin. Her head snapped back and hit the tree with a satisfying crack. Hanabi fell to her knees, reaching up with one hand to clutch her head.

Sasuke looked down at the girl, gasping, oozing blood from where she'd impacted solid oak. Realizing suddenly that his vision was too sharp, he deactivated sharingan. _She probably has a concussion_, he thought dispassionately. _I shouldn't have done that…_

He reached down and offered her a hand (the fractured one, since he couldn't move his other arm at all). It took her a second to focus on it, confirming the concussion, but when she did she looked at it as though someone were offering her a hand-up with the blade of a katana. "Your techniques," Sasuke informed her, "are not good for a close-range, offensive style." Her eyes traveled slowly from his hand to his face, where she stared as though looking for something. Finally, she reached out with the hand bracing her on the tree branch and took his. He hoisted her up onto her feet just as Udon and Anko reached them.

Sasuke turned his eyes away from Hanabi to take in Anko's livid expression and Udon's frightened one. "Your turn," he told Udon. The boy flinched, and it took Sasuke a second to realize how that sounded. "I meant," he clarified, "Hanabi needs a medic-nin." Udon visibly relaxed and nodded. Sasuke nodded at Anko, then turned and went on ahead.

They caught up with him later. Nobody complained about him going off on his own.

OOO

"I'll reopen the chakra pathways in your arm if you tell me what you meant about my fighting style," said a voice, cutting through the light meditation Sasuke'd been using to attempt to heal his arm himself. He opened his eyes to the sight of Hanabi standing in front of him with the look of a person who was Chewing Aluminum For the Good of the Mission. Sasuke wasn't sure if it was more due to the concession or the fact that moving her head must be making her neck muscles scream in agony. He raised an eyebrow.

"You should be lying down," he pointed out. "With a cold pack on your neck." Hanabi's eyes narrowed.

"It'll take days to open on its own," she continued, as though he hadn't pointed out something she'd been hearing from a very intimidated Udon ever since they'd set up camp three hours ago. "It'll be painful when it finally does, too. But I'll open it, if you tell me what you meant."

"What makes you think I want you anywhere near my pressure points right now?" Sasuke asked, mildly curious as to what her answer would be. After all, it was her fault he couldn't move his uninjured arm to begin with. The chewing aluminum look intensified, and he mentally smirked. _Definitely the concession, then_.

He was surprised she was making it, really. She'd spent the first two hours they were setting up camp (amidst Udon's protests that she needed to rest the muscles in her neck) having a whispered conversation with Anko. Well, Hanabi had been whispering. Anko saw no problem announcing in a rather loud voice that she had no idea what was "going on in that jerk-off's head," and if Hanabi wanted to know what he'd meant she should "ask him yourself." Hanabi's response, apart from giving Anko a rather impressive full-body glare that Sasuke was pretty sure only a member of one of Konoha's noble clans could pull off, was to snatch up the water bottles and go spend an hour sulking at the creek by which they'd camped.

Apparently, curiosity had won out over pride. Interesting…

"It is not," Hanabi forced out stiffly and formally, "in anyone on this team's interest to incapacitate you, nor is it in the team's interest to withhold information that could help me improve my fighting."

"I didn't withhold information," Sasuke responded coolly. "In fact, I was very clear on what I thought about your current style. I do, however, agree that incapacitating me wasn't in your best interest." Hanabi graced him with one of those glares she'd demonstrated on Anko. Sasuke raised an eyebrow again, wordlessly asking her if she really thought that would work.

"…would you like me to unblock the pathways to your arm or not?" she asked finally, taking on the air of one who honestly could care less what his decision would be. This, naturally, was a front, since she'd already showed her hand. Sasuke weighed being able to use his arm against letting her squirm and keeping her away from his chakra pathways, and finally had to admit that she made a fair point. _Damn it…_

"Clear the pathways in my arm and I'll answer whatever question you had about what I said," he responded, the concession on his part rankling. At least he could be fairly certain it didn't show on his face.

Hanabi for her part looked at him suspiciously, as though there might be some sort of catch (an idea that was, he thought, completely stupid, since she had set the terms), but then she sniffed in agreement and reached over to lift his arm. He saw her activate byakugan and jab at a point on his side, and suddenly all the feeling in his arm came flooding back. With pins and needles. Stabbing about an inch into his arm at every nerve ending. And he knew what needles stabbing that deep felt like, so it was an educated opinion. He reached over and rubbed his arm with his splinted hand, forcing down a wince. Hanabi tossed her hair superiorly.

"I told you it would hurt. It would have been worse if you hadn't let me fix it." She sat gingerly down next to him, facing the fire, and turned her head a little towards him. Then she winced and turned it back. Sasuke suddenly felt entirely justified in injuring her. "…So?" she said after a while, a tinge of impatience coming into her voice. "What did you mean?"

"What did I mean about what?" he asked, turning to look at her with his best blank face. She shifted her entire body towards him to glare.

"You said you would tell me what you meant!"

"I said I'd answer any question you asked me," he corrected, inwardly smirking. "Be more specific." The glare intensified, but he remained firm. The fact that her reactions amused him certainly didn't hurt his resolve, naturally.

He could almost see the capitulation. "What did you mean about my fighting style? You said my techniques were unfit for close-range offense."

Sasuke considered dragging this out a little more. That, after all, could definitely be answered with a 'yes, I did.' He felt there should have been a medal involved when he resisted the urge. "The Gentle Fist," he began, "it is primarily for defense. When an opponent comes towards you, you move aside and use his own momentum to throw him off balance. Then you reach out and hit the pressure points you can see with byakugan, which incapacitates him." He stopped for confirmation, and upon receiving it in the form of a raised eyebrow, he continued. "The problem with this is that, by necessity, the primary stance has quite a bit of weight on the heels, so that the user can pivot when an opponent comes at them, and the hands are kept at the sides so that you can move them easily."

"I know how my own style works," Hanabi interjected, looking disgruntled. Sasuke gave her his best 'stop interrupting' look. It was a little rusty. He usually only used it on Sakura and Naruto.

"_Which brings me_ to why this doesn't work for a close-range offensive style." He continued. The stretched his arm a little as he went on. "When you charge an opponent, your weight is on the front of your feet. This means that once you reach your opponent, to use Gentle Fist you need to switch your weight from front to back upon reaching your opponent. Because of the placement of your arms, you therefore leave your entire front unprotected for long enough for an experienced fighter to exploit the weakness." He raised an eyebrow. "To put it simply, _your techniques are not good for a close-range, offensive style_."

Hanabi, who up to now had been taking all of this rather philosophically, considering, glared death at him. "Neji-niisan fights offensively all of the time, so it has to be possible," she insisted. "How is it that he can use Gentle Fist offensively if it isn't possible?"

"You could do it," Sasuke told her, "_if_ you were faster on your feet than your opponent. You should learn to fight with your weight shifted to the front as well. As for Neji…" he looked back at the fire, suddenly feeling a little uncomfortable. "I can't offer you a comparison to the way he fights. I've never actually seen him do it. All I know is hearsay."

Hanabi seemed unaware of his uneasiness, much to his relief. She was, in true shinobi fashion, much more interested in what he had to say about her own style. "How am I supposed to make those changes before the exam?" she demanded, scowling. "It'd take weeks to change how I fight that completely. Months."

"If you can't adapt, you won't do very well on missions higher than C-rank," he responded pointedly, leaving unsaid the 'which is what you'll need to do if you want to make chuunin.' "But," he continued over her exclamation of 'I am perfectly capable of adapting!' "you're right. Endurance training takes longer than three days. Instead, don't fight offensively. Your style _is_ perfectly adapted to letting your opponents come to you."

"I can't change the way I fight completely in three days!" Hanabi snapped, getting to her feet and wincing a bit as she changed the positioning of her neck and the muscles spasmed. "Oh, this is ridiculous. You're not going to help. Why did I even bother?"

Sasuke blinked. Giving advice was one thing. Actually _helping_… "You already can fight defensively," he pointed out. "You just need it to be your first instinct." Which meant she needed to do it non-stop until she was so mentally and physically exhausted that she simply lashed out that way on instinct. "I can give you opportunities to practice as we're traveling."

Hanabi was looking at him like he'd suddenly grown antennae. "…How?" she asked finally.

"Projectile deflection," he told her, making sure she didn't see the part of him that was grinning evilly at the thought of randomly throwing sharp objects at her throughout the next few days. Finally something interesting to do…

"Can I help?" Anko called from the other side of the fire (where she'd been eavesdropping through the entire conversation). She hadn't hid the glee lacing her words. Sasuke's response was in no way connected to the subtle widening of Hanabi's eyes.

"She needs to learn to react to attacks from an unknown source," he allowed. _To that end…_ He turned to Udon, who was also eavesdropping (with a surprising amount of skill, actually) while he set up the bedrolls not too far away. "You, too," Sasuke told him, causing him to fumble the bag he was holding (but not drop it, he _was_ a shinobi), and look at Sasuke as though he'd never seen him before. "You need to work on your aim," he expanded.

"Oh, good," Hanabi said sarcastically. "I've always wanted people who _need to work on their aim_ to throw lethal weapons at me."

Sasuke smirked as Udon bristled subtly. Oh, yes, the next three days would be _much _more interesting…

OOO

AN: So I was originally going to put another scene in this one, but it's taken _so damn long_ to get it out that I figured it could wait until next chapter. I'm sorry for taking so long on what is essentially a transition chapter. Good news is that the next chapter is the start of the chuunin exam. With any luck, I'll get to the second part pretty quickly (I need to keep making up teams, damn...)

Thank you to everyone who reviewed.

BloodZephyr: The nature of Naruto's illness is that it only really appears when he gets injured. As current events in the story did not result in injury, his disease hasn't been at the fore. What has been at the fore, since we are in Sasuke's head, is Sasuke's issues. He's essentially a pretty self-centered person. His own problems usually come first. Don't worry, though, after this arc there's a hell of a lot more Naruto, _and_ his illness. Have some patience with the story, please!

Dragon695: While I appreciate that you have your own views on how this story should progress, I have planned it in a certain way. You are, of course, free to write your own story with a different set of events, and to stop reading my fic if you don't like how everything's panning out, but I would appreciate it if you ceased to order me to write mine to your specifications. This is the last time I will respond to a review from you regarding this issue.

Sherbert Mayhem: -headdesk- I'm so sorry this took so long. I'm glad you like the fic so far, and I hope you will continue to read and enjoy it.

HoshitheHorse: Thanks for the review! I'm glad you like the fic. I'm sorry it's taken so long to get out the next chapter, but I hope it's up to standards (oh man, do I hope…)

Lila Mae: So not so soon. I'm sorry! I'm glad you liked the notes, though, they were fun to write!

Dark-Sky-of-Avalon: Thanks, I'm glad you liked them! They're my favorite part of last chapter.

Dragon77: Am continuing! See? –apologizes for the extremely late update…-

Right, so I'm off to write more of the next chapter. Hey, maybe it'll be out _within four months_! (Have I mentioned that I'm sorry about that?)


	12. Chapter 12

Chapter 12

_Whoosh_. _Thud_.

"_Udon_! I was _trying to sleep_!"

"Sasuke-san said to attack you when you were least expecting it."

"He meant when we're moving."

"Yes, I did. New plan."

_Whoosh_. _Thud_.

"You _hypocrite_…"

"You're most likely to be attacked when you're asleep."

"Just wait until my shift, _Uchiha-san_. Then we'll see how _you_ like—"

"Will you three _shut up_? Udon, _you're _supposed to be on guard."

"Yes'm."

"Uchiha, do something useful with your insomnia for a change, and get some water."

"…Hn."

"And…heh… and _Hanabi_…"

"Stop _laughing_, sensei!"

"Heh. Go… bandage that up or something. You'll attract a predator, and since I'm going _back to sleep_ you kiddies will have to handle it on your own."

"But I…! Oh, fine."

***

The day had dawned bright and hot. Tree branches trapped thick patches of haze under the leaves—cloying patches of moisture that stole breath right out of a person's lungs and trapped sweat on exposed skin. Heat rose in messy, damp waves up to the branches under the canopy, where the four ninja traveled in a compromise between the shade and the thick air. This heat was something they'd all experienced before, trained in since old enough to hold kunai, and while annoying they were used to it.

They had much more of a problem when the landscape changed from forests to dry, grassy wasteland.

On the steppes surrounding the Village Hidden in the Grass, the heat was dry, and the sun-baked earth loose enough that the inevitable wind kicked up large patches of dust that stuck to skin and sapped all the moisture out. This was especially so in the old riverbed Anko had chosen to follow instead of fighting through the tall, sharp grasses. The dust they kicked up by walking got in their eyes and mouth, and their hair stuck to their faces in damp, gritty clumps. Sasuke, who had left the sleeveless shirts he'd been wearing at home in favor of a loose black gi and thick sword belt, was torn between being grateful for the added protection from the dust and annoyed that the long sleeves and high neck were managing to trap the heat close to his skin.

Hanabi seemed to be having similar problems, what with the traditional heavy white clothing favored by much of her clan. Her mood was not helped by the fact that, three days later, her neck was still sore, and she had been run ragged by near constant bombardment, courtesy of her traveling companions. The result was irritable complaining about how the turns made what should have been a few hours' walk into nearly a day of journeying. Anko pointed out that if she really objected she could blaze a new trail herself. "'Course," she added speculatively, "you'll never find the village, since our escorts through the genjutsu are all waiting on this path, and you don't know the terrain very well, _and_ you'd probably get bitten by a rattlesnake, but don't let that stop you from striking out on your own. Initiative is an important quality for a ninja, after all."

Hanabi glared the glare of someone who wants to retort, but can't work up the energy, while Anko exercised the infuriating ability all teachers have to ignore nonverbal death threats from their students. This was, by now, a pretty familiar exchange. Sasuke tuned them out. He was far too hot to actively take an interest in his team at the moment. He was, in fact, far too hot to do much of anything except struggle against the exhaustion brought on through sleep deprivation and near-constant physical activity. He rolled his stiff shoulders and cast around the monotonous scenery for something to focus on.

As though on cue, Udon threw a senbon at Hanabi, who proceeded to jump out of the way and round on him, looking ready to spit fire. It was a tribute to how tired she really was that she worded her response so harshly; "Udon, if you throw _one more weapon at me_ I will _shove _it _straight up your_—"

"Quiet!" Anko snapped suddenly, just as Sasuke tensed and turned towards the foreign presence he'd suddenly sensed to his left.

The nin who stepped out of the grass was surprisingly short, not to mention remarkably fresh in comparison to the four dirty, sweaty Leaf-nin in front of him. He had a firm, easy stance that spoke of years of training, and wore the scimitar at his side like it was second nature to do so. At least, Sasuke thought it was a 'he.' Gender was obscured by the loose long-sleeve shirt and long pants he was wearing, likely to protect from the sharp blades of grass he'd been standing in, and the hitae-ate tied around his neck obscured whether or not he had an Adam's apple. Either way, the nin somehow managed to give the impression that he was looking them over even though any identifying features (including his hair and his eyes) were hidden by a rice hat angled over his face.

Sasuke found he rather disliked the attention. He pasted his best unimpressed look onto his face and pointedly returned the favor.

"Your walls shall not hold me, for I have wings to fly," the nin murmured, his voice monotone, but distinctly male nevertheless.

"You cannot track my flight, for I will take to the trees," Anko drawled back, somehow managing to give the impression of reclining nonchalantly against something in the middle of a clear pathway. "You people come up with some pretty fucking weird passwords…"

The nin did not respond. "Welcome, Konoha entrants," he said instead. "I will be your guide through the genjutsu surrounding the Village Hidden in the Grass, and to your lodgings in the village. If you will please follow me." With that, he turned and walked straight back into the tall grass again, completely disappearing from view.

"Oh, of course," Hanabi muttered, reaching up to rub her neck with a grimace. "Force us down a needlessly winding, dusty path for hours, when we could have just walked straight there through the grass." Sasuke marveled at her ability to forget logical arguments posed earlier that day. It explained quite a bit, actually…

"Maybe it's an attempt to throw off our sense of direction," suggested Udon, looking speculatively after their guide. "If they just gave us coordinates, it wouldn't really be a hidden village, would it?"

Somehow, Sasuke doubted that was it. He frowned at the place where the grass nin had disappeared, activating sharingan as he did. There was a genjutsu there, for sure, but it was hard to tell what it was hiding from his angle. "Wait," he ordered the others before they could step off the path after the unnamed Grass nin.

"What now?" Hanabi snapped, clearly reaching the end of her rope. "He said to follow him off the path!"

Sasuke very nearly ignored her (he was sure it was common sense not to follow a nin from another village into unknown territory), but Anko was right. He needed to be chuunin, and if _they_ didn't pass then he wouldn't either. And as Hanabi had just once again demonstrated, they were either too inexperienced or too stupid to do it on their own. Which meant he'd have to spell everything out. Wonderful… "He's a high-ranking ninja from another hidden village, and we are here to participate in the chuunin exam," he told her, voice coming out a little more annoyed than he'd intended to let on. "Last time I entered, they started the weeding out process before the first test even began. I want to be sure he's been sent to guide us."

Hanabi bristled at him like an offended cat, then pointedly looked to Anko, who shrugged. "He's got a point. For what it's worth though, the guy _did_ know the password."

"It wouldn't hurt for Sasuke-san to check, right?" Udon chimed in, frowning at the place where the ninja had disappeared with a new wariness (Sasuke found a new appreciation for Udon's often latent ability to reason). Figuring this counted as a vote in his favor, Sasuke walked up the path until he was directly in front of the place where the Grass nin vanished, and looked into the thick plant life.

"There's another path that forks from this point," he reported, frowning. "It's hidden by about five layers of genjutsu, all showing thick grass growing at slightly different angles to obstruct a casual observer's view. Two of the layers look like they hold a seal of some sort." It was actually very well done. He was impressed. Of course, it _was_ a genjutsu to hide the entrance to a hidden village. Impressiveness came with the territory. "I can't tell exactly what the seals do, and I don't see any other blatant traps," he continued, deciding to keep his teammates informed in case they had to respond to the situation, "but I don't see our guide either. Hanabi."

"Right," she answered, walking up to the newly discovered path herself and taking Sasuke's place directly in front of it. She formed a quick seal and narrowed her eyes. "Byakugan… Oh." She relaxed, her the look on her face settling somewhere between annoyed and puzzled. "He's… standing in the grass to the right of the path."

"Um… is he doing anything?" Udon asked after a pause.

"No. He's just standing there. Looks like he's listening to something. Probably us."

"So it's safe to proceed, then? No mouse traps blocking your path?" Anko asked, obviously amused.

"No mouse traps, jounin-san," came a call from the grass. "I do suggest your genin refrain from using such interesting tricks in the genjutsu, however. Chakra use will activate the protections around the village, and then I will be forced to disqualify the team on the grounds of having too few members."

"You heard the man, kiddies. Eyes off," Anko said cheerfully, walking past Sasuke and Hanabi and onto the path, Udon following quietly behind her. Sasuke frowned, but did as instructed, and nudged Hanabi as he walked off the main road.

"Defense," he reminded her. For a moment it looked like she was going to argue, and then, miraculously, she sighed and deactivated byakugan as well.

"Yes, yes," she muttered. "I know."

***

The genjutsu itself was pretty unbelievable, once one entered it. Upon stepping off the path, Sasuke found himself in a four foot by four foot square of path, surrounded on all sides by the thick grass they'd been walking alongside for the past half a day. The square moved with the guide, and the guide didn't wait for them, so they had to stay pretty close together and nearly on top of the grass nin in order to avoid becoming lost. After a while the four walls became indistinguishable from each other, ensuring that the nin caught inside would be well and truly lost should they stray from the path.

There were two explanations for this. The first was that Grass had failed utterly to adequately disguise its village, which, considering its reputation for genjutsu, Sasuke doubted rather strongly. The second explanation required there to be a much subtler genjutsu at work, from which the first genjutsu distracted the viewer. If there were any discordant details, they would be small. Fortunately, Sasuke had been trained from an early age to watch for such elements in his surroundings, so as to prepare him to better use his bloodline. Sharingan of course made seeing through a genjutsu easier, but he theoretically didn't need it.

The problem was, in practice he couldn't seem to focus on his surroundings. His mind kept drifting from its task, concentration always far enough away that he couldn't quite hold on to it. He was burnt out and too uncomfortable to do anything more than follow his team and its guide. Of course, he recognized what he was feeling as his body hitting its limit. He'd felt nearly the same when he'd fought that blond-haired Akatsuki member, the one who fought using explosions, with the weird fixation on art. The fact was, he shouldn't have been hitting that limit. He hadn't done anything physically taxing for days, and sleep deprivation was something he'd experienced many times before. The most disturbing part, though, was that he couldn't bring himself to worry about any of it now.

Of course, it was possible that Hanabi was worrying enough for the both of them. To her credit, she hadn't gone so far as to actually hyperventilate in the middle of enemy territory, but she was holding herself too stiffly. Her white eyes, made even more prominent by the black and blue smudges underneath them, were too wide and darting around like a frightened rabbit's. Sasuke supposed that, for someone with a fighting style that depended almost entirely on being able to see in all directions, having to purposely cut off her long-range vision in an insecure setting was something out of a nightmare. Then again, even Anko was holding herself too purposely relaxed, as though trying too hard to show she wasn't bothered by the arrangements while keeping herself loose enough to turn on a dime, should the need arise, and the guide had a set to his shoulders that implied he'd much rather not have four nin from another country at his back.

Really, the only one of Sasuke's temporary companions who did not seem a little disconcerted was Udon. He was looking around himself with a frown on his face, and he kept glancing up at the sun and then squinting ahead of the quide as though he might be able to see where they were going. "How much further is the village, Grass-nin-san?" he asked suddenly. Sasuke frowned at him, even as Hanabi whipped her head around (wincing as her neck protested the movement) and glared at him, presumably for asking such a stupid question. The Grass-nin halted and turned slowly to face him.

Udon ignored everyone but the Grass-nin (even Anko, who had snickered), a determined look on his face. "It's just that, according to the sun, we've been walking for a few hours now, and if we don't get there soon we'll have to travel through the dark." The Grass-nin's mouth turned down a little, before smoothing back out into a straight, neutral line. Sasuke found himself wondering if the frown was due to annoyance, contemplation, or the thought of having to escort the four of them through the dark while they were armed. It was impossible to tell without seeing his whole face. Personally, Sasuke would be most concerned with guiding armed nin, but one never knew how stupid other people were. It was always best not to assume.

"I am afraid," their guide said slowly, in tone that implied he was planning what to say before actually saying it, "that I am not authorized to state the exact distance we have remaining. However, we should reach the village well before dark, Leaf-nin-kun."

"Great!" Anko cut in. "Can we keep walking, then?"

The Grass-nin looked at her for a minute, before giving a very short bow and continuing forward. Hanabi narrowed her eyes. "He's mocking us, I just know it," she muttered, presumably in the general direction of her teammates.

Sasuke had a brief internal debate before deciding that a response was better than ignoring her entirely. "He isn't important. We only need him to get to the village. A good shinobi knows when not to rise to provocation."

"Oh, you are such a hypocrite!" Hanabi snapped. "I don't see anyone _else_ slamming people into trees!"

Sasuke bristled, mostly because she was right about him losing control of his temper. "Funny," he responded as coldly as he could manage. "_I_ don't see anyone else purposely provoking people capable of slamming others into trees."

Udon looked over his shoulder worriedly. "Guys, maybe you shouldn't fight here…"

"Oh, just be quiet, Udon! This has nothing to do with you!" Hanabi snapped. Udon frowned at her.

"Well, if you're going to be _that_ way about it, _I_ don't see anyone else on this team making an effort to work together. We're going to be taking a very dangerous exam in a few days. It'd be a good idea to get along, don't you think?"

"Don't broadcast our weaknesses in the middle of enemy territory," Sasuke snapped, pointedly keeping his voice as low as possible and glancing at the guide out of the corner of his eye (he seemed to be tuning them out, fortunately).

"He's _right_!" Hanabi spat, immediately changing her assault in favor of gaining an ally. "You think you're so great, but we're here, too, and we want to pass just as much as—"

"We're here!" Anko interrupted. Sasuke whipped his head forwards and peered through the opening that had just appeared in the grass walls.

Below him was a shinobi village.

***

Grass, Sasuke thought, was a bit of an architectural marvel. The village was built, as most villages were, with a solid wall all around the perimeter and a heavy guard duty around the main enterance. Unlike other villages, however, Grass had another wall about a third of the way in, and another wall after that. All three had solid gates that opened only after their guide proved his identity with more obscure lines that Sasuke found vaguely familiar but couldn't place, and stated that all four of the guests in his company were from Leaf and here solely for the chuunin exams. The buildings (all high enough that they should have collapsed under their own weight) were made almost entirely of mud bricks and thatched roofs, woven so tightly that the village's shinobi could use them as a secondary highway. Grass bridges stretched along the particularly wide jumps in order to better facilitate traffic. On the ground, there was a network of small, winding roads through the structures, made even more confusing by the near hundreds of stands pushed up against every available surface. Vendors selling baskets and ceramic products were prominent, Sasuke noted as he followed their guide through the maze. Not too many food stands, really, but this could probably be explained by the fact that Grass's climate was pretty unfavorable for large surpluses of crops. Most common of all, of course, were weapons manufacturers; Sasuke tried to muster up the interest to catalogue how many, but gave up around thirty-eight, all with shelves stocked with blades curved in order to more easily cut through the thick stalks protecting the village on either side, thick grass ropes and nets, sturdy twine and row upon row of explosive tags and other types of diversionary devices. What space wasn't taken up by weapons and trap materials was filled with jutsu scrolls. Sasuke suspected, should he bother to look, that a vast majority would be for genjutsu. It fit with Grass's reputation and emphasis very well to lean towards the type of technique meant to trick the senses.

Slightly more interesting, to Sasuke at least, was that upon fully entering the village the sun repositioned itself in the sky to about three hours earlier and about 35º to the left. There had been three different levels, then, instead of two. The first one, the walls of the path, was obvious, and meant to distract the target from the other two layers. Usually, an obvious genjutsu such as that would clue someone in, and they'd dispel it, but they'd been warned that using chakra inside the path would trigger traps, thus ensuring that the other two levels could continue to function uninterrupted. Next was the sun's accelerated movement across the sky, which the target would accept while in the genjutsu, but could correct for upon leaving it. Most nin would assume that the second level was the last, since once freed from the illusion, the difference became obvious. Thus, the effect of the third level of genjutsu would remain hidden. That is, the target would never notice that the path, which had seemed straight, was probably full of twists and turns that obscured both the location of the hidden village and its distance from the riverbed. Of course, this last was just a theory based on the sun's location in the sky. Sasuke would never really know. Bastards…

Anko left them shortly after entering the third and final gate, of course. "Don't get into too much trouble now, kiddies," she said cheerfully. "I'll see you at the first part of the exam, and if I have my say not a moment before." She wandered off cackling at them, and Sasuke wondered somewhat sardonically if she'd remember to at least check them in before finding the filthiest bar she could stand and getting thoroughly smashed.

"Oh, damn," Hanabi said suddenly. "I forgot to ask her what that bit of poetry was from. Now she'll just pretend she doesn't know what I'm talking about if I bring it up."

_Poetry_? Sasuke thought, confused as to what she was talking about, even as Udon asked, "What poetry?"

Hanabi frowned. "You know," she insisted, "that code she used when _he_," here she gestured to their guide, who was pretending not to eavesdrop on them as he wound his way through the streets, "showed up. I'd bet a year's salary it's from an untitled poem by an anonymous author, written sometime last century, and that Anko-sensei knows the entire thing by heart."

"Really?" Udon asked, understandably incredulous about this bit of news. "_Poetry_?"

"Poetry," Hanabi insisted. "She comes out with it every once in a while when she's speaking, but unless you ask her pretty soon after she'll never tell you what it's from. I think she's embarrassed about it, or something." She shrugged, then, in the universal genin-chuunin code for 'who the hell knows what jounin are thinking, anyway?'

The three temporary teammates fell silent after that, Sasuke at least taking a little time to mull over all the interaction he'd had with Anko and wonder if she'd ever dropped a phrase that he'd missed. If she had, it had been ridiculously well-hidden. Then again, poetry wasn't really his area of expertise, and he eventually let it slide into the corner of his brain titled "Quirks People Have that Make No Sense" and brought his mind back to more important things. Like looking at the ridiculously tall mud-brick building in front of which the Grass-nin had stopped.

"This is the hotel you will be staying at for the entirety of your time in our village," the guide intoned politely. "If you go inside and talk to the receptionist, she will make sure you each get a room. I have here three passes that will allow you to travel as you wish through all three shells of Grass. Show them to the receptionist when you go in." He pulled from his kunai pouch three thin slabs, each with a number and katakana stamped into them, presumably as an identifier. "As a representative of the Village Hidden in the Grass, I wish you all luck in the upcoming exam, Leaf-nin."

He bowed, making it extremely rude on their parts if the three Konoha nin didn't do the same. They all did, albeit stiffly, with murmured thanks for the well-wishes and guidance into the village, and then turned and walked back into the throng of people without another word. Sasuke watched him turn a corner and fall out of his line of vision, then turned to stare at Hanabi and Udon, who were eyeing him and each other awkwardly. He raised an eyebrow. "Standing in front of the hotel isn't conducive to getting a room," he opined flatly. "Go and get some rest."

"Oh, yes, and let you do all of the scouting for us? Thank you, no, I think I'll take a look around myself," Hanabi replied haughtily, lifting herself up to her full height (Sasuke found himself once again wishing for a large sack and permission to knock her out and put her in it). "I am, after all, uniquely equipped to do so. Besides, the entire point of the three of your random attack spree was to tire me to a point of reflex. I hardly see how rest is going to help."

"I wasn't implying that I would scout the village myself," Sasuke responded, feeling a twinge of defensiveness at the accusation. He was beginning to think this whole 'team bonding' thing was more trouble than it was worth. He'd never had to make an effort before, after all, and it had always worked out fine. "I assumed you'd want a few hours to yourself after being in the constant company of three other people for nearly a week." He left off the '_I_ certainly do' that threatened to come out of his mouth. "Besides, there is a difference between acting on reflex and plain sloppiness. I'd prefer if you were doing the former during the exam."

"…Um, so would I, actually," Udon piped up, sounding a little apologetic. "We should probably all get settled in at least. None of us have really been sleeping that well over the past week, and exhaustion often leads to similar symptoms as intoxication. Slow response time, poor coordination, lowered inhibitions…"

"Oh, heaven forbid Uchiha-san lower his inhibitions," Hanabi interrupted caustically. "What do inhibitions have to do with fighting, anyway?"

Sasuke gave up. "Do what you want. I'm going to get a room." He turned his back on the two of them and started walking towards the door. So close to a bed, the full force of his exhaustion hit him, and he suddenly felt weighted down, as though it was hard to move, or like the air was particularly thick here. He definitely needed a nap. And to get away from the pests for a bit.

The pests in question were having a hurried, whispered conversation. It ended abruptly when Udon called his name. He sighed inwardly, then looked over his shoulder at them and raised an eyebrow. _What now?_

"Would you like to meet us tomorrow morning to look around?" the younger boy asked. "We can do it together, see if any of the other teams are here yet…?" He sounded hesitant, like he was asking for a personal favor from someone who didn't particularly like him. Sasuke considered working up the energy to come up with something caustic.

He shrugged instead. "Alright," he answered. "See you tomorrow at 0-800." He faced forward again and walked away before Udon could reply.

He'd meant it too, had fully planned to meet them the next morning to scout for competition. The plan had been to take a quick nap, then get some dinner and do a preliminary sweep of the area around the hotel for useful stalls, in fact. But when Hanabi and Udon came into his room and woke him up the next morning (from a healthy distance away, they weren't _complete_ fools), understandably annoyed that he'd missed the meeting he'd set up by hours and (in Hanabi's case) ranting about all the time wasted on their only full day in Grass before the exam. The sun shining through the window, the clock on the bedside table indicated 10:30, and getting out of bed felt more difficult than the entire five-day trip combined.

***

The building housing the first part of the chuunin exam was squat compared to the hotel. It sat in the middle of quite possibly the only area of Hidden Grass that wasn't filled with vendors. Instead, someone had taken the time to build a highly landscaped garden of plants that grew well in the village's climate, and lining the path were obviously high-level ninja, body language relaxed but eyes on each shinobi or kunoichi that went through the door. Sasuke could feel their eyes following him like a physical presence crawling up and down his spine. He was strangely grateful for it, actually, as it got some adrenaline pumping through his system and worked to focus his foggy head a little. This was, after all, definitely not the time to be succumbing to… well, whatever was going on with him these days.

"We're supposed to report to room 4-L," Udon informed his teammates, as they walked through a surprisingly decorative entrance hall towards the stairwell at the far end. "There should be a table just inside the door where we have to give our names and the numbers on our passes." He rustled the scroll that had appeared without warning on the desk in his bedroom that morning, brightly colored seal on the back proclaiming it the official instructions for all teams entering the exam. He squinted at the tiny kanji someone had painstakingly written in, Sasuke was sure, as bland a language as humanly possible. "We're not supposed to bring anything in with us except weapons and provisions, in case we pass to the second round, and we'll be searched at the door. Damn," he said, frowning. He reached into a pocket on the jacket he was wearing and pulled out what looked like a well-worn medical scroll. "Guess I can't bring this in, then, huh?"

"Give it to me," Sasuke offered. "I'll make sure they don't find it when they search us."

"Thanks," Udon said gratefully, handing it over with a smile. "It's got all the medic jutsus I know on it, with notes on how to use them. I know I'd forget exactly the one I needed if I didn't have it." He turned back to the scroll, apparently unaware of the grimace from Hanabi and the eyebrow twitch Sasuke gave at the implication that their medic would forget a jutsu under pressure. "The exam is supposed to start at 0-700 hours," he read. "We're supposed to listen to exactly what the examiners tell us to do, with the understanding that if we don't they can fail us. Also, the…"

"What's that over there?" Hanabi asked suddenly. They'd reached the third floor of the building, and there was a gaggle of genin at the end, crowded around a man sitting at a desk, apparently arguing with him. Sasuke looked at the number by the door, which proclaimed it to be room 4-L. He snorted.

"That's a test. Ignore it. The more people taken in by it, the better for us."

"It says 4-L on the door," Hanabi pointed out. "Genjutsu?"

"_Che._"

Hanabi glared at Sasuke for the sound, but didn't comment. Maybe because she realized that someone trying for chuunin _with an activated doujutsu_ shouldn't have had to ask that question.

"Yeah," Udon answered, squinting at the group until the staircase rounded a corner and blocked his view. "One they usually put up to catch the people first taking the test. It got most of the ninja in my year the first time my team took it." He eyed Sasuke. "What about you, Uchiha-san?"

"My team saw past it," Sasuke answered shortly, wondering when this had turned into story time. "What else does that scroll say?"

"Oh, sorry, um…" Udon returned to the scroll, and the rest of the short walk to the end of the hall on the fourth floor was spent listening to Udon list the requirements and qualifications for entering the exam. The jounin sitting at the actual table let them through with relative ease (after making some obscure reference to the fact that their sensei was completely insane, of course), and then Sasuke was walking into the room where he would take the first part of the chuunin exam for the second time in his life. He took a moment to ponder how strange it was to feel both more and less confident about the whole thing.

Then he got a good look at who they would be competing with, and the 'less confident' feeling went away immediately.

The three of them were standing in a plain, white room with rows of desks, as expected. Also as expected, the entrants seemed to have broken themselves up by village, and further by individual team. Sasuke tuned out Udon, who had continued to read the instructions under his breath, and Hanabi who was hissing questions back. He took off his hitae-ate and used the ties to secure it to his forearm, letting the fabric of his sleeve bunch underneath and prevent it from sliding off, allowing the surface to be used as a mirror. Then, leaning back against the wall, he passed his eyes over their competition.

Mist hadn't sent too many teams this year, he noted. He counted only three, and neither looked particularly interesting. Either the village had a shortage of teams, or the genin looked weaker than they were, then. From the way they were standing (overly aggressive), and the fact that they seemed to be more interested in being intimidating than scoping out their competition, he suspected the former. Maybe all that purging of bloodlines had finally taken its toll on the once powerful village, if these were the best genin they could produce. Either way, Stone had made a much more impressive turn-out. seven teams, and all of them older shinobi. He frowned as he noted one that may be trouble (a traditional two-boys-and-a-girl, idly chatting and apparently ignoring everyone else around them, but one of the men had a sword out that he was leaning on, and it was turning subtly so as to get the lay-out of the room), then did a quick sweep over the Sand teams (depending on how the first test was organized, these would be annoying or a non-issue), before allowing himself to settle on the largest group in the room.

Traditionally, the village hosting the exam had the largest turn-out, and this year was no exception. There were eight teams from Grass huddled in the room, interspersed with some chuunin that were clearly there to help facilitate the test. All of the ninja were arranged semi-casually around a team of openly-awed rookies who were staring at the crowd as though they'd never seen so many different ninja in one place in their lives. Sasuke felt a wave of amused nostalgia settle into him, breaking temporarily through the numb professionalism he'd wrestled his exhaustion under this morning before meeting up with Hanabi and Udon. _Heh,_ he thought. _Nothing to worry about, but it might be interesting…_ He mentally shook his head and went back to his survey.

Konoha had predictably made a pretty low showing. There was one other team, and from what Sasuke could tell at first glance, the only person on it with a prayer of passing was the girl (an Inuzuka, who was holding her puppy to her chest and grinning either to herself or to the room at large, as though she knew something none of them did and they'd be very sorry soon enough). Over all, not too bad a group, but nothing he couldn't handle. He stretched up and locked his fingers above his head, before leaning forward from the wall and rotating his shoulders before lowering his arms behind his back, still laced--a test to the flexibility of his injured wrist, as well as a show to anyone looking that it was a non-issue and a convenient way to get his hands out of sight.

_Rabbit, monkey, ram…_

The door slammed open, revealing an attractive, dark-haired Grass jounin who walked in quietly enough to give the impression that her feet weren't touching the ground. Her hitae-ate was around her neck instead of her forehead, allowing her bangs to fall just above her dark eyes and her short-cropped hair to frame her angular face in a way that would be very pretty if her expression wasn't that of a person who was about to enter a swamp against her will. A series of jounin filed in behind her and took a place against the wall. "My name is Korou," the woman told the suddenly quiet room at large in a voice that implied she was about to give a loud-speaker announcement and was rather bored with the prospect. "I am the head examiner for the first test in this exam. I am going to move to the front of the room, and you lot of flea-infested field mice are going to form a single-file line in front of me to collect a number. You will then go to the chair marked with your number and sit in it until I get bored enough to hand out your exams." Not waiting to see how the room at large would react to this announcement, she set off across the room leaving the participating genin to dive out of her path. Sasuke took a quick look at his two teammates, who were staring at her with ridiculous, gobsmacked expressions on their faces. He smirked, then made three seals under the cover of the sudden activity in the room (_dragon, rat, dragon_). This part of the exam was suddenly much more entertaining.

***

Korou waited a good five minutes after everyone had seated themselves before letting up her level, unimpressed stare and turning to the chalk board, where she began writing (Sasuke had a sudden flashback to academy and tried not to shudder visibly at the thought of Iruka turning around and shouting while appearing to grow three times in size). "Alright, you miserable excuses for academy rubbish," she stated in the same calm, collected voice. "Here are the rules. You'll get an exam sheet with ten questions on it. You get a point for each correct question. The twelve teams with the highest total scores will go on to the second section of the exam. You lose two points for each time you cheat. If you lose all of your points, your entire team fails this section." She rounded on the classroom suddenly, and fixed them all with the blank look she'd held since walking in. "Questions?" she asked in a way that managed to imply what would happen to those who didn't understand in exquisite detail. "No? Well then." She formed four seals, and the exam papers appeared in front of each participant. "Begin."

There was another flurry of activity, during which every entrant looked down at the paper in front of him or her, and several let out gasps of surprise at what they saw. Later, Sasuke would of course deny it until he was blue in the face, but he was as surprised as the rest of them, though not for the same reason.

There were actually ten questions on the paper, question ten as obscure and useless in practice as the previous nine. This was actually a written test, without any tricks or hidden meaning. Sasuke glanced at Udon, who was sitting two rows in front of him and three seats down, whose shoulders had hunched (in embarrassment or anxiety, Sasuke couldn't tell), and at Hanabi, who was scowling with her eyes firmly fixed on the paper. Not that that meant anything, with her bloodline limit, Sasuke thought wryly. Ah, well, incorrect intelligence was a fact of life as a shinobi, and she might as well learn to deal with it now.

Sasuke looked at his paper, determined to attempt answers without looking. There was a chance, after all, that it could convince the jounin watching that he knew all of the answers without cheating, which would make it easier to cheat on the next few questions. Under the table, he let his left fingers fall into half the symbol for rabbit, before bringing it out into plain sight and continuing to work on a problem about the angle of trajectory of a kunai at a target six feet off the ground.

As this last of three levels of genjutsu settled over the occupants of the room, Sasuke dropped his pen, did a few stretches on his injured wrist so that it didn't cramp in the interim of the exam, adjusted the hitae-ate on his arm so that it reflected the writing hand of the nearest chuunin, and bent his head so that his hair obscured the view of his eyes, in which he promptly activated sharingan. This last deception was probably an unnecessary precaution, but it gave him some security should one of the jounin manage to notice and dispel all three layers. He smirked a little at the image of the chuunin he'd chosen to copy, then let his hand move in tandem with him. The jounin examiners' eyes slid off him as though he wasn't there.

Sometimes, it was good to have Sakura as a teammate. Particularly when she'd spent a good two years focusing on genjutsu, and was willing to share her knowledge. Genjutsu hid what he was actually doing to cheat, and this particular set meant that he didn't have to use sharingan on fifteen people at once. Plus, even if they counted each layer as a penalty, and caught him using his bloodline limit, he'd only have eight points off, and he'd remain qualified for the grading portion of the exam. Now he just had to hope that Udon and Hanabi would both manage to finish the test with high scores as well, and they had a pretty good chance to finish in the top twelve.

A kunai flew through the air and landed in the table through the exam of a ninja four seats to Sasuke's left. "You fail," Konou told the ninja, who was looking vaguely startled at the projectile weapon suddenly a few inches from his face. "You and your team can pack up and go." _Ha, did you see that?_ crowed the Naruto voice in Sasuke's head, _four minutes in and already one team down. We are going to kick _so much ass_! _ Sasuke was glad for the genjutsu and his longer bangs, because he couldn't quite suppress the smirk that slipped onto his face as the sound of another weapon hitting wood broke through the sound of scratching pens. _Two down_…

***

The twenty-seven teams had been whittled down to fifteen by the time Konou told everyone to bring up their exams ("Single-file, and if I see any more writing you and your good-for-nothing team fail immediately"). Sasuke, who'd been done for the past half-an-hour, dropped the outer-most layer of his genjutsu and stood up. Udon gave him a thumbs-up from where he was standing near the front of the line, which he ignored quite pointedly. A quick scan of the other faces showed a wide variation of emotion from exuberant cockiness to nervous chagrin, and Sasuke was reminded once again of academy. It was an uncomfortable association, to be honest, and he suspected he'd be quite glad when it was over.

He waited until they'd been dismissed to an adjoining waiting room before dropping the last two layers of genjutsu, and took some pleasure in watching the in the other room jounin who'd accompanied them blink a few times and look around suspiciously. The first layer had been a blanket genjutsu telling everyone in the room that the ceiling was white, which was actually true. This made the genjutsu very easy to accept, and thus made it easier to become ensnared in Sasuke's second layer. This one made it appear that Sasuke was following directions, and attempting to answer all the test questions without cheating. He proceeded to do everything he appeared to do in the genjutsu until he completed the sign for the third and final level, which forced the jounins' eyes away from him. Theoretically, after accepting the first two layers, this last layer would go unnoticed.

His amusement at the examiners' confusion evaporated when two or three of them turned their suspicious gazes on him through the open door. _I should have waited until I was away,_ he acknowledged grudgingly, then inwardly shrugged. There was little chance of the knowledge that he'd had a genjutsu up would affect anything now, though there was a possibility that they were still taking points for discovered cheating. A risk, but an acceptable one, particularly since he'd been using chakra to hold the illusions in place. He pushed the slight unease at the slip in caution away, and turned to watch as Hanabi pushed her way through the crowd to meet up with him, Udon trailing behind her like a puppy that just gone on the furniture and was _very sorry _about it.

Time to face the consequences of misinforming her about the tenth question, then. Sasuke sighed, and began hoping to any higher power available that the results came in before she reached him. After nearly a month in her company, he'd much rather face Grass's equivalent of the Forest of Death than an irate Hyuuga Hanabi.

***

A/N: It has been a very, very long time since I last updated this fic, and for that I apologize. I am still working on it (as this chapter hopefully proves!) and I intend to keep doing so! I may have finally managed to get over my several-month-long writers' block, which is a good sign for future chapters. n.n;;

Normally I'd go through all of the reviews I've gotten and respond to each one, but it has been so very long that I doubt you remember what you wrote, back in the day. So, just rest assured that I read your review and am very thankful to have received it. I hope that you will continue to read and enjoy my fic!

Now I have to give a huge thanks to my beta, Jade, without whom I would never have managed to get through this damn thing, and all of the people in the interim who asked how I was doing and reminded me that people actually wanted to see what was next. In particular, I'd like to thank Asuka Kureru, who is, by the way, one of the best writers in this fandom in addition to being a great person, and if you haven't read her fics you should.

I think that's all I've got. Hope you enjoyed this chapter, and I'll try to not take so long on the next one!


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